Brent Jindra, 48, voted for Donald Trump in three elections, drawn largely by the promise of tougher immigration enforcement. That support turned to alarm on July 13, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained his wife, Galina Bobreneva, 40, a Russian national with an asylum claim and a pending green card.
Jindra told The New York Times he had considered himself a MAGA loyalist ā until he watched his wife taken into custody.
The couple flew from San Francisco and landed at Burbank Airport, where Jindra planned to meet clients, and Bobreneva intended to visit friends. According to their account to the Times, an ICE agent in plain clothes approached and told Bobreneva she had been selected for secondary screening. Roughly 15 minutes later, she was handcuffed and driven away in an unmarked vehicle to a holding cell in downtown Los Angeles.
āShe did not jump a wall, she did not swim a river,ā Jindra told the Times of his wife. āShe came in Trumpās beautiful, big front door.ā
Bobreneva arrived in the United States in 2021 on a tourist visa and extended it after Russiaās war in Ukraine broke out. She applied for asylum in 2022. She and Jindra met in March 2025 and married that December, and by the spring he had filed a petition to sponsor her for a marriage-based green card. By the time she was detained, according to the Times, her application had been accepted, and she had already been fingerprinted as part of the process. Her lawyer told the paper she was never out of lawful status.
The Department of Homeland Security gave a sharply different account.
In a statement to the Times, the agency described Bobreneva as āan illegal alienā and said she was targeted because āshe overstayed her welcome in violation of our nationās laws.ā DHS added that work authorization or a pending application does not, on its own, confer legal status.
Jindra said he had backed the movement to stop illegal entry by people with criminal records, and argued the president had no mandate to pursue immigrants who entered the country legally. āA US citizen just watched his wife get dragged away and had no idea where sheās going,ā he told the Times.
Bobreneva was held for 16 days. She spent one night on the floor of a basement holding cell in Los Angeles, then two weeks at the Adelanto ICE Processing Facility in the Mojave Desert, before her release on July 29 on a $35,000 bond and an electronic ankle monitor.
She described the conditions in stark terms.
āI felt like a piece of meat, not like a human,ā she told the Times. She said the facilityās lights were never turned off and that guardsā radios created constant noise that kept her from sleeping. Only four showers worked for roughly 120 women, she said, and safe drinking water was hard to come by. She also said medical care was denied to detainees, including a pregnant woman with diabetes who asked for insulin and did not receive it. āI never thought that it was so easy to take freedom from anyone,ā she said.
DHS disputed the descriptions. A spokesperson told the Times that any claim of substandard conditions at Adelanto is false and that detainees receive meals, water, medical treatment, and the ability to contact family and lawyers.
The complaints are not new to Adelanto. Earlier this month, the family of another detainee, Carlitos Ricardo Parias, 44, shared a video that appeared to show worm-like creatures in a bottle of drinking water provided at the facility. Parias remains in federal custody awaiting deportation to Mexico. That video surfaced weeks after a federal judge ordered ICE to provide detainees at Adelanto with clean, potable drinking water within 24 hours, according to The Guardian. The order followed a class-action lawsuit alleging detainees were held in dangerous conditions, including insufficient food, unclean water, and inadequate medical care.
Bobrenevaās case is not resolved. She must continue reporting to ICE and appear at future hearings, a process her family expects could take months. Jindra, describing the toll on a marriage that began barely a year ago, put it plainly: āWe are living in fear in my own country.ā
https://ctninfo.com/he-voted-for-truā¦etained-his-wife/
https://www.facebook.com/CaribbeanNewsMedia
