Marie-Thérèse Ross-Mahé was in bed at home in Anniston, Ala., when she was startled by the beating. The men surrounded the house where Ms Ross-Mahé, a French citizen, lived with her American husband until his death in January. They were knocking loudly on windows and doors.
When Mrs. Ross-Mahé, 85, opened the door, they pushed inside, saying they were immigration police, he said in an interview. They handcuffed him and took him to an unknown car before taking him to the jail. He was still wearing his bathing suit, pajamas and slippers, he said.
“I didn’t know what was really happening to me,” he told me in France this week, in his first interview since being deported after 16 days in prison. “It was so embarrassing. My hair hadn’t been combed. I had just gotten out of bed.”
After his arrest on April 1, Mrs. Ross-Mahé was swallowed up in the country’s immigration detention system, where, he says, he was tied by the wrists and ankles of other detainees, and loaded onto buses and planes “like a sack of potatoes.” After two weeks in detention in Alabama and Louisiana, he said, he feared he might die.
His story gives us a glimpse into the opaque labyrinth of immigration detention facilities operated by the Trump administration, where many like him never see a lawyer, have no idea where they are and little understanding of why they were detained or, in his case, later released. It also raises questions about how the system can be used: The judge said in his decision that he believed Mrs Ross-Mahé’s son, Tony Ross, who had been fighting with her over her late husband’s estate, was the one who instigated her arrest.
The New York Times has not been able to independently verify the details of his arrest experience, but it echoes the accounts of others who have been arrested in similar circumstances. Tony and his brother, Gary Ross, did not respond to requests for comment, as did their attorney.
The experience surprised Ms. Ross-Mahé, who previously considered himself a supporter of President Trump and was so fond of his policy of deporting illegal immigrants that he thought it should be adopted in France.
“I didn’t think these things existed,” he said of the immigration facilities where he was detained. “I thought that when we arrest them, we will treat them properly.
He added, “They treat them like dogs, not like humans.”
When asked, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that “all detainees are provided with proper food, quality water, bedding, medical treatment and the opportunity to communicate with their family members and lawyers.” It added that “ICE has higher incarceration rates than most US prisons that hold real American citizens” and is “regularly inspected and audited by outside agencies.”
Ms Ross-Mahé said she and her American husband, Bill Ross, began dating in the 1950s, when they were both working at a NATO base on the outskirts of Nantes, in western France – she as a secretary, he as a soldier. Their romance was short-lived, she said, as she developed a relationship with one of her friends in town, Michèle Viaud, returning to Alabama with her.
They stay in touch over the decades as they build their lives and families. Mr. Ross married and raised two sons with Ms Viaud, who died in 2018. Ms Ross-Mahé had three children with her first husband, Bernard Goix, who died of lung cancer in 2022.
Mr. Ross sent her messages of support when Bernard was sick, she said.
Four months after Bernard died, Mr. Ross sent him a ticket to visit him in Alabama.
Soon their friendship turned into love. “It all came back,” said Ms. Ross-Mahé. For nearly two years, they flew between Alabama and France, visiting each other.
Last year, they got married in Alabama in April 2025, starting in a parking lot in front of a lawyer and then in a church.
Mr Ross has hired a lawyer to process his application for full citizenship, he said. He received an employment authorization from US Citizenship and Immigration Services, he added – the first step in obtaining a Social Security number. Because she was the spouse of a veteran, the Department of Defense issued her an identification card, which The New York Times reviewed, that gave her grocery discounts at a nearby military base.
A few weeks before his arrest, a neighbor took him to an immigration hearing, he said.
“To me, I was legit,” he said. “I never thought this would happen.”
Mr. Ross died suddenly one night in January. Ms Ross-Mahé said she found him in the bathroom, already cold. He left the bungalow with its backyard pool, worth about $173,000; two cars; and a bank account holding about $1,500, according to court records. He did not leave a will.
Soon, Ms. Ross-Mahé quarreled with the sons of Mr. Ross, both in their 50s, because of an inheritance.
The day after the death of Mr. Ross, his sons took the truck and his car, according to the decision of the district judge, which made it difficult for Mrs. Ross-Mahé to leave the area. Court records say the sons forced her to hand over her husband’s cell phone. That meant he couldn’t make local calls, he said, because he only had his French phone.
Ms. Ross-Mahé said they cut off her cable and internet, took her father’s credit cards and refused to help him fill his prescription for blood pressure medication.
His neighbors came to his aid, helping him pay the electricity and water bills, he said. They took him to the hospital, bought him groceries and arranged for Wheels on Meals home delivery, he added.
He found a second lawyer and changed the locks of the house so that the sons of Mr. Ross can come in whenever he wants, he said. He covered the windows with paper, so that no one could see.
“I didn’t want to let them win,” he said. “But I wasn’t feeling well at all, I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping, I was afraid to die.”
The probate court set a trial date for April 9.
Since eight days have passed, Mrs. Ross-Mahé was arrested by Homeland Security officers.
He said an ICE official told him he was in the United States illegally between September, when his 90-day visa expired, and early December, when his green card application was filed. The Department of Homeland Security initially said in a statement that he had overstayed his 90-day visa for about four months, but said in a later statement that he had been in the country illegally for seven months.
In her ruling on April 10, probate judge Shirley A. Millwood, a Republican who was elected in 2024, blamed Mr. Ross’s youngest son, Tony, a court security officer and former state trooper, for initiating his stepmother’s arrest.
The judge said that US marshals informed Tony the day before his arrest that he would be arrested soon. An hour after he was arrested, he received a text message confirming his arrest, the judge said.
At first, Ms. Ross-Mahé and her lawyer said, she was held in a dirty county jail, before being transported in shackles to Louisiana and held at an ICE processing facility.
Throughout this trip, he said, he had waited for countless hours on hard benches, dirty prison beds or trucks.
“It was humbling all the time,” she said. “They never spoke, they always shouted.”
The experience left him with severe back pain and sciatica, which made it difficult for him to walk.
Other female inmates helped her go to the bathroom to shower, she said. They made him hot chocolate and gave him cookies. He said that on the night before Easter they sang songs that brought him to tears.
“They were amazing,” she said. “I found God in that prison through those women.”
After two weeks in prison, he said, he lost hope of being released and did not think he would live much longer.
“I was expecting to die, really,” she said. “I knew I wouldn’t make it.”
On the morning of April 16, the 16th day of his arrest, he said, he was woken up by a guard at two o’clock and told him that he was leaving. He was afraid that he would be transferred to another institution. Instead, he was flown to Dallas and later on an American Airlines flight to Paris.
The French attorney general in New Orleans, Rodolphe Sambou, who called for his release, said the US government “decided to release him, because of his age and his state of health.”
Back in France with her sons, Ms Ross-Mahé is still in shock. She wears clothes bought at the mall when she comes back from the airport, since her old stuff is still in Alabama. The doctor diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder, he said.
He learned of the judge’s decision, and the suggestion that his stepchildren were behind his arrest, after his release.
“I didn’t think they could do something like that,” he said. “It destroyed a part of me.”
The wedding ring of Mr. A gold ross hung on a chain around his neck, and a cross made of red precious stones.
“I won’t be able to go back to my husband’s grave, I won’t be able to see my friends there again,” she said. “That’s really sad.”
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs contributed reporting from New York.
