Brent Jindra watched helplessly as the immigration crackdown he had voted for three times suddenly tore through his own marriage.

One moment, the 48-year-old technology salesman and his Russian-born wife, Galina Bobreneva, were walking through California’s Burbank Airport after an ordinary flight. The next, immigration agents were questioning her, placing her in handcuffs and taking her away.

Jindra did not know where his wife was going—or when he would see her again.

“A U.S. citizen just watched his wife get dragged away and had no idea where she was going,” he recalled.

For years, Jindra supported President Donald Trump because of his promises to impose strict immigration enforcement. But he believed those policies were intended to target dangerous criminals and people who entered the United States unlawfully.

He never expected them to reach his wife.

“She did not jump a wall, she did not swim a river,” Jindra said. Instead, she entered through what he called Trump’s “beautiful, big front door.”

Bobreneva arrived in the United States on a tourist visa in 2021. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she extended her stay and applied for asylum in 2022—years before meeting the man who would become her husband.

Jindra and Bobreneva met in March 2025. He described what followed as a “storybook romance.”

They married nine months later, in December. In April, Jindra petitioned to sponsor Bobreneva for a marriage-based green card, believing they were following the official path toward building a permanent life together in America.

By the time ICE detained her, Bobreneva had reportedly received confirmation that her application had been accepted. She had also submitted fingerprints as part of the process.

Her attorney maintains that she was never out of lawful immigration status.

The Department of Homeland Security tells a sharply different story. In a statement, the agency described Bobreneva as “an illegal alien” and said she was arrested because “she overstayed her welcome in violation of our nation’s laws.”

That legal dispute remains unresolved.

But the human consequences began immediately.

Bobreneva was taken to the Adelanto ICE Processing Facility in the Mojave Desert. There, she said, women were crowded together while the lights remained on around the clock.

“I never thought that it was so easy to take freedom from anyone,” she said.

Her description of how detention made her feel was even more haunting: “Like a piece of meat, not like a human.”

DHS disputed her characterization of the facility’s conditions. But Bobreneva emerged from detention visibly transformed by the experience, according to accounts of the couple’s ordeal.

She was released on July 29 after Jindra secured a $35,000 bond. Yet returning home did not end the nightmare.

Bobreneva was fitted with an electronic ankle monitor and ordered to report to ICE. She must also appear in immigration court as proceedings that could determine whether she can remain with her husband continue—potentially for months.

The couple now lives with the fear that she could be detained again.

For Jindra, the experience has shattered the distinction he once drew between Trump’s campaign promises and the real-world machinery enforcing them.

“The allure of the MAGA campaign was around illegal entries of criminals,” he said.

He supported a crackdown framed around border security and public safety. What he saw at Burbank Airport was his wife—who had entered with a visa, applied for asylum and pursued a green card through marriage—being taken from him without warning.

“We are living in fear in my own country,” Jindra said.

His disillusionment arrives amid mounting scrutiny of ICE operations.

A July report from the American Civil Liberties Union, examining more than 1,200 immigration enforcement operations during Trump’s second term, found that nearly one-third involved the use or threat of force. Separately, 32 people reportedly died in ICE custody during 2025, the agency’s deadliest year in more than two decades.

Other longtime Trump supporters have also begun publicly expressing frustration—not only over immigration enforcement but over affordability and the administration’s broader priorities.

In June, three-time Trump voter and Ohio truck driver Chris Tackett described the economic pressure confronting families.

“The average American is struggling to make ends meet right now,” he said. “And nobody wants to hear ‘the war’s almost over.’ Nobody wants to hear ‘it’s gonna get better.’”

Another Ohio woman who voted for Trump three times broke down in tears while discussing rising costs, saying it had become difficult to “afford to breathe at this point.”

But for Jindra, dissatisfaction with Trump is no longer primarily political or economic.

It is deeply personal.

He voted for the president believing stricter immigration enforcement would protect his country. Then he stood inside an airport and watched that same enforcement system handcuff his wife and take her away.

Their storybook romance survived the detention—but the sense of safety they once felt in America did not.