A decades-long romance that defied time and distance has ended in an unexpected and grim turn: an 86-year-old French woman, who moved to the U.S. last year to build a new life with her reconnected 1960s sweetheart, is now being held in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Louisiana.
The story of Marie-Thérèse, a native of Nantes, France, reads like a romantic drama that has shifted into a chilling real-life legal nightmare. Back in the 1960s, she was working as a secretary when she met Billy, an American soldier stationed at a NATO base in Saint-Nazaire. The pair forged a connection, but when Billy was ordered back to the U.S. in 1966, they lost contact completely. Both moved on with their separate lives: they married other partners, raised children, and built families in their respective countries.
Decades later, in 2010, the former sweethearts reconnected, and began visiting one another regularly, even alongside their respective spouses at the time. By 2022, both had been widowed, and the pair rekindled their old romance. Marie-Thérèse’s son described the couple as being smitten “like teenagers,” calling Billy a “charming, adorable man” who won his mother’s heart. The pair married in 2024, and Marie-Thérèse relocated to Anniston, Alabama, to start her new life, submitting an application for a green card to secure permanent legal residency in the U.S.
Tragedy struck just months later, in January 2025, when Billy died suddenly. What followed was a bitter dispute over his estate between Marie-Thérèse and her stepson, Billy’s son. According to Marie-Thérèse’s son, who spoke to French newspaper Ouest-France, the stepson launched a campaign of harassment against his mother: he threatened her, intimidated her, and even cut off access to basic utilities including water, electricity and internet at her home.
Marie-Thérèse retained legal counsel to resolve the inheritance conflict, but she was taken into ICE custody the day before a scheduled court hearing on the matter. Neighbors of the elderly woman alerted her biological children in France after the arrest, and her son has since spoken out to raise awareness of her case.
He described the arrest to Ouest-France, saying that agents restrained his mother by handcuffing both her hands and feet, treating her “like she was a dangerous criminal.” While there is no concrete evidence linking the stepson’s alleged harassment to the detention, the timing of the arrest has raised serious questions about the circumstances that led to ICE taking an 86-year-old woman with chronic health conditions into custody.
Currently, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs has intervened in the case, and consular officials have already visited Marie-Thérèse in detention. Her son says despite her advanced age and pre-existing health conditions including heart disease and chronic back pain, his mother, who he describes as a “fighter,” is holding up as well as can be expected. Still, he warns that her health cannot tolerate the conditions of detention long-term.
“Our priority is to get her out of this detention center and repatriate her to France,” he said. “Given her health, she won’t last a month in such conditions of detention.”
This case comes amid a major expansion of ICE’s authority and operations following the start of Donald Trump’s second presidential term. The agency has been placed at the center of the administration’s aggressive mass deportation policy, with its budget and enforcement mandate significantly expanded to carry out removals of undocumented immigrants across the country.
For Marie-Thérèse’s family, the entire ordeal feels surreal. “This story was like a bad American film,” her son said. “Every morning I wake up and tell myself none of it is true, that it was just a nightmare.”
As of reporting, the BBC has reached out to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, to request comment on the case, and has not yet received a response.