“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley” (The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry) – Robert Burns
A MAGA man and his Russian wife meet ICE
Brent Jindra is a Californian, a tech salesman, and a three-time Trump voter. His wife is Russian. But he failed to connect Trump’s overt hostility to foreigners in America to the foreigner he married. He took Trump at his word. Now, both he and his wife, Galina Bobreneva, have inescapable proof of what has long been evident to fact-based thinkers. Trump’s actions are not constrained by what he says he will do.
In July, Brent and Galina flew from their San Francisco home to Burbank Airport in Los Angeles. He planned to meet clients. She planned to meet friends. It did not go as intended.
After the couple deplaned, a young man in a brown hooded sweatshirt stopped Galina. He offered her the mordant greeting. “Congratulations, you’ve been chosen for secondary screening.” For the next 15 minutes, he questioned her. Then he put her in handcuffs and led her away to an unmarked car. In doing so, he insisted he was just following orders. And he offered misplaced optimism.
According to the couple, he said, “I’m only doing my job. Everything will be OK.”
Lock-up
He may have just been doing his job. But not everything turned out OK. Galina was detained for 16 days. She spent the first night on the floor of a frigid basement holding cell in downtown Los Angeles, keeping company with other arrested immigrants, including a gaunt diabetic in her 70s pleading for insulin, to no avail.
After 18 hours, she was shackled at the wrists, waist, and ankles. Then she was tossed in a sweltering van and taken to a Mojave Desert detention center. She spent the next two weeks there. The New York Times described Galina’s reaction and the conditions of her confinement.
“I felt like a piece of meat, not like a human,” recalled Ms. Bobreneva.
By the time she changed into blue prison garb and was assigned bunk L63 — a lower bed in the women’s section — it was 5 a.m. Thirty minutes later, as she drifted off to sleep, orders blared over the loudspeaker for detainee count and breakfast lineup.
Sleep deprivation was a constant, she said. Lights were always on. Hand-held radios carried by the guards crackled day and night. On her birthday, Ms. Bobreneva recalled, she shared chocolate she had ordered from the commissary with fellow Russian-speaking detainees from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Armenia.
Ms. Bobreneva described neglect, filth and people in despair.
For 120 women, there were seven showers; only four worked. Potable water was scarce; ailing people were denied care until they required hospitalization, she said, echoing allegations in a federal lawsuit.
DHS, as it has in the face of every tale of ICE’s inhuman neglect and sadistic treatment, denied it. In a statement, a homeland security spokesperson said: “Any claim that there are subprime conditions at Adelanto ICE processing facility are FALSE. All detainees are provided with proper meals, water, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers.”
Fortunately, Brent could afford a good lawyer. Galina was released on a $35,000 bond, wearing an ankle monitor, and with a new, despairing understanding of life in Trump’s America. She said, “I never thought that it was so easy to take freedom from anyone.”
Brent shares her awakening. “We are living in fear in my own country,” he said.
How did it get to this?
Bobreneva arrived on a tourist visa in late 2021, extended it twice following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and applied for asylum in 2022. She met Mr. Jindra in March 2025. By December, they were married. She is now fighting charges that she overstayed her visa.
However, she has a pending green card application. Her lawyer insists she was never in the US illegally. Tradition is on her side. Previous presidents allowed immigrants with no criminal record and pending green card applications to stay in the US while pursuing their permanent residency applications.
But Trump has a quota to meet. So despite rhetoric about only going after the violent criminals and gang bangers, his immigration force has cast a wide net to meet an arrest rate of 2,000 immigrants a day. This has surprised Trump fan Brent. He explained why: “The allure of the MAGA campaign was around illegal entries of criminals. There was never a mandate for this president to turn the barrel of the gun and start going after people who legally entered.”
He added, to explain why his wife should not have been swept up, “She did not jump a wall, she did not swim a river. She came in Trump’s beautiful, big front door.” The allusion to a welcome mat comes from a 2015 GOP primary debate when then-candidate Trump promised he would welcome good immigrants.
That was eleven years ago. And so far, this metaphorical front door has remained barricaded (except for white South Africans).
Nonetheless, even as ICE fatally shot Americans in the street, Brent clung to his delusion until the evidence for Trump’s perfidy washed across his threshold. If there were any doubt in his mind, ICE dispelled it. In a statement, the agency said: “To be clear, work authorization or a pending application do NOT confer legal status in the United States.”
The best-laid plans
Before her collision with Trump’s deportation machine, Brent and Galina had planned to celebrate her 40th birthday on July 16, in Sonoma County’s wine country. Brent booked a suite at a boutique hotel, prepaid for visits to three vineyards, and hired a driver. I hope the package he sprang for was refundable.