Trump Voter Says Wife Was Detained by ICE After California Airport Arrival

Hannah McKay/Reuters A three-time Trump voter was left devastated after the immigration policies of the president he repeatedly supported resulted in his wife being taken away.

Tech salesman and former MAGA supporter Brent Jindra, 48, was stunned when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained his wife, Galina Bobreneva, after the couple landed at Burbank Airport in California, The New York Times reported.

“A U.S. citizen just watched his wife get dragged away and had no idea where she was going,” Jindra, who voted for President Donald Trump, 80, because of his promises of strict immigration enforcement, recalled of the day.

Jindra was in town to see clients, while Bobreneva—who is originally from Russia—had traveled with him to visit friends.

Instead, she was taken to the Adelanto ICE Processing Facility, leaving Jindra struggling to understand how his wife, who “did not jump a wall, she did not swim a river,” could be detained when she “came in Trump’s beautiful, big front door.” Bobreneva arrived in the U.S. in 2021 on a tourist visa, which she later extended after the war in Ukraine broke out.

She applied for asylum in 2022, before meeting Jindra.

“It was your storybook romance,” Jindra told the Times of their relationship.

The couple met in March 2025 and married that December.

In April, Jindra petitioned to sponsor his wife for a marriage-based green card.

By the time she was detained, Bobreneva had reportedly received official confirmation that her application had been accepted and had already been fingerprinted as part of the process.

Her lawyer has asserted that she was never out of lawful status.

“I never thought that it was so easy to take freedom from anyone,” she told the Times, describing conditions inside the Adelanto ICE Processing Facility as making her feel “like a piece of meat, not like a human.” She said the lights were kept on around the clock and that women were crammed together inside the facility.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official disputed her characterization in a statement to the Times.

Bobreneva’s account comes as scrutiny of ICE’s treatment of detainees and use of force continues to mount.