Frenchwoman who married GI sweetheart returns home after ICE ordeal

ORVAULT, France (AFP) — A Frenchwoman who moved to the United States to marry a Vietnam war veteran she met six decades ago returned to France on Friday after she was detained by U.S. immigration authorities, the French foreign minister said.

The 85-year-old woman, who was not being named at the family’s request, “returned to France this morning, and we are pleased about that,” Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told reporters on a visit to the southern city of Montpellier.

The woman’s son spoke of his “total relief” to the regional daily Ouest-France.

Sebastien Arrouet, the mayor of the village of Orvault in western France where the woman lived, expressed “joy” at her liberation.

“Together with her son, we had opted for complete discretion to allow diplomatic channels to find a swift resolution for her release,” he wrote on Facebook, adding that he was “eagerly looking forward to welcoming her back to Orvault.”

The woman had travelled to Anniston, Alabama, in 2025 to marry the former Air Force colonel, and was seeking a green card, which allows people to live and work permanently in the United States.

The couple first met some 60 years earlier when she was working as a bilingual secretary and he was a soldier stationed at a NATO base, reportedly in Saint-Nazaire, western France, but both ended up marrying other people.

Decades later, after they were both widowed, they reconnected.

According to the New York Times, the woman gave up her life in the village near the French city of Nantes and moved to Alabama, where the couple married in April 2025.

But the American died suddenly in January at the age of 85, throwing her immigration status into uncertainty and leading to her detention by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) in Louisiana.

U.S. media reports said his death also ignited an inheritance dispute between the woman and his son.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security told AFP on Tuesday that the woman had been detained on April 1.

‘Handcuffed and shackled’

She had entered the United States in June 2025 on a tourist visa that allowed her to stay for 90 days. However, she was still in the United States “seven months later,” according to U.S. authorities.

Citing accounts from U.S. neighbors, her son told AFP that his mother was arrested, “handcuffed and shackled.”

ICE is regarded as the strong arm of U.S. President Donald Trump’s fierce anti-immigration campaign. It has faced nationwide criticism in America over its aggressive tactics against documented and undocumented immigrants, and for the shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens this year.

As soon as news of the Frenchwoman’s arrest broke, a diplomatic source had told AFP that the French Consulate General in Atlanta was “closely monitoring the situation” and providing her with “consular protection.”

When asked about ICE’s approach, Barrot criticized methods being used by U.S. authorities without referring specifically to the Frenchwoman’s case.

“There have been instances of violence that have raised our concern. But the main thing is that she is back in France, and that fully satisfies us,” he said.

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By Agence France-Presse