Russian Galina Bobreneva, after being detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, spent two weeks in the Adelanto immigration prison (California). In a conversation with the New York Times (NYT), she spoke about chronic lack of sleep, lack of drinking water and problems with access to medical care. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Bobreneva “exceeded her authorized period of stay.” Her lawyer, however, argues that the woman has been in the country legally since entering the United States in 2021.
Bobreneva came to the United States on a tourist visa at the end of 2021, after which she extended her stay twice. In 2022, she applied for asylum, and in April 2026, for a green card based on her marriage to a US citizen, whom she married a few months earlier. Bobreneva's fingerprints were taken and it was confirmed that the application had been accepted.
The Russian woman’s husband, Brent Jindra, is a “MAGA patriot” (Make America Great Again), he voted for Donald Trump three times in the presidential election, writes NYT.
In mid-July, the couple left San Francisco for Burbank. Jindra, who works in sales, was going to meet with clients, and Bobreneva was going to see friends. The couple later planned to celebrate Galina's 40th birthday in the Sonoma County wine region. Jindra made a hotel reservation, paid for visits to three wineries, and hired a driver.
Upon arrival in Burbank, the couple was approached by plainclothes agents who introduced themselves as employees of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Bobreneva was taken to a separate room for questioning, and her husband was left at the airport, accompanied by Burbank police officers.
About 15 minutes later, the Russian woman was taken out in handcuffs and put into an unmarked car. She spent her first night on the floor of a holding cell in the basement of a building in downtown Los Angeles. She recalls that among those detained was an immigrant woman in her 70s with diabetes who asked for insulin. However, ICE officers ignored her requests.
The next day, Bobreneva, along with several other detainees, was placed in handcuffs in a van and taken to the immigration center in Adelanto, where she remained for two weeks. According to her, the lights in the room were practically never turned off, and the guards’ radios were constantly on, which is why the detainees suffered from lack of sleep.
Bobreneva also said that for 120 women there were seven showers, of which only four were operational. According to her, there was not enough drinking water, and those who became ill could not receive medical care for a long time – until the moment when their condition became so severe that hospitalization was required.
“I felt like a piece of meat, not a person,” Bobreneva recalled.
On July 29, Bobreneva was released on bail in the amount of $35,000. She was given an electronic bracelet that limits her movement to a radius of 75 miles (about 120 km). The first court hearing in her case is scheduled for October 22 – the couple intend to seek Galina's right to remain in the United States.
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that Bobreneva had exceeded her permitted stay and was in the country illegally. The department emphasized that “having a work permit or a pending application” does not provide legal immigration status in the United States.
As the NYT notes, federal law allows for the detention of green card applicants with expired visas, but under previous administrations, authorities generally did not classify such applicants as illegal migrants.
“The appeal of the MAGA campaign was related to the fight against illegal entry of criminals. Nobody gave this president a mandate to turn up the guns and start going after people who entered the country legally,” Jindra told NYT.
Earlier, RTVI talked about 59-year-old Russian woman Alevtina Soboleva, who was detained at Buffalo Airport (New York) in July. Her lawyers were told that the woman, who arrived in the US in 2021, allegedly overstayed her visa. However, Soboleva's daughter Daria claims that all of her mother's documents had legal status, and her application for political asylum on Form I-589 is pending. Daria exclusively told RTVI about the conditions in which Alevtina Soboleva is kept in a penitentiary institution.
RTVI also talked about the dangers of a fictitious marriage in the United States.
