85-Year-Old French Widow Returns Home After US Detention

An 85-year-old French widow of a former U.S. Army captain returned to France on Friday after spending 16 days in U.S. immigration custody, following her detention in Alabama for overstaying a tourist visa.

Marie-Thérèse Ross, a French citizen, was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on April 1 in Anniston, Alabama, according to the Department of Homeland Security. She had entered the United States on a 90-day visa but remained after her husband's death earlier this year. Ross was transferred to a federal immigration detention facility in Louisiana, where she was held until her release and departure for Paris.

Ross had moved to Alabama last year after marrying William Ross, a retired Army captain, in April. The couple had first met decades earlier as teenagers at a NATO base in western France and reconnected following the deaths of their previous spouses, sparking a long-distance relationship. William Ross died unexpectedly in January, leaving no will and triggering an inheritance dispute with his two adult stepsons from a prior marriage. A county probate judge overseeing the estate indicated that one stepson, a retired Alabama state trooper now employed...