A Frenchwoman who moved to the United States to marry a Vietnam war veteran she first met six decades ago returned to France on Friday after she was detained by US immigration authorities, the 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-Noël Barrot told reporters on a visit to the southern city of Montpellier.
She had moved to 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 at a NATO base, but according to US media reports both married other people.
Decades later, after they were both widowed, they reconnected.
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 US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).
US media reports said his death also ignited an inheritance dispute between the woman and his son.
The US Department of Homeland Security told AFP on Tuesday that the woman had been detained on April 1st.
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 US authorities.
Citing accounts from US neighbours, her son told AFP that his mother was arrested, “handcuffed and shackled”.
When asked about ICE’s approach, Barrot criticised those methods without referring specifically to the Frenchwoman.
“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.
