Federal immigration agents arrested the niece and grand-niece of slain Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qassem Soleimani in Los Angeles late Friday after Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked their green cards, the State Department confirmed Saturday. Both women are now in ICE custody and face deportation.
Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter, Sarinasadat Hosseiny, are among at least four Iranian nationals connected to Iran's current or former government whose legal status the Trump administration stripped this week. Afshar's husband has also been banned from entering the United States, NBC News reported.
The arrests mark the latest, and most personal, move in a broader administration effort to expel foreign nationals accused of backing Tehran's regime while living comfortably on American soil.
The State Department said Afshar and her daughter had been living in Los Angeles "for many years" while publicly supporting the Iranian government and celebrating anti-American attacks. Rubio announced the action in a post on X, calling Afshar "an outspoken supporter of the Iranian regime who celebrated attacks on Americans and referred to our country as the 'Great Satan.'"
A State Department letter, cited by the New York Post, went further. It said Afshar "promoted Iranian regime propaganda, celebrated attacks against American soldiers and military facilities in the Middle East, praised the new Iranian Supreme Leader, denounced America as the 'Great Satan,' and voiced her unflinching support for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a designated terror organization."
That is not the profile of someone who came to America seeking refuge. It is the profile of someone who came to America seeking its benefits while cheering the people who want to destroy it.
Rubio did not mince words. In a post on X, he wrote:
"The Trump Administration will not allow our country to become a home for foreign nationals who support anti-American terrorist regimes."
The Department of Homeland Security provided a damaging timeline of Afshar's immigration history. Fox News reported that Afshar entered the United States on a tourist visa in 2015, later received asylum in 2019, and became a green card holder in 2021. But DHS said her subsequent trips back to Iran undercut the very asylum claim that got her legal status in the first place.
Think about that sequence. She arrived as a tourist. She claimed asylum, a protection reserved for people fleeing persecution. She obtained a green card. Then she traveled back to the country she supposedly fled. All while living well in one of the most expensive cities in America.
The administration's broader push against immigration fraud has made cases like this a priority. If someone claims they cannot safely return to their home country and then voluntarily returns, the credibility of that claim collapses on its own terms.
The specific legal or regulatory authority Rubio used to revoke the green cards was not detailed in the State Department's public statements. National Review noted the move is likely to face court challenges, a near-certainty in any high-profile immigration enforcement action under this administration.
Rubio wrote on X that he "terminated both Afshar and her daughter's legal status" and confirmed both are in ICE custody pending removal from the United States.
The destination country for deportation has not been disclosed. Neither has the full name of Afshar's daughter, though the New York Post identified her as Sarinasadat Hosseiny. The State Department cited "privacy and security reasons" for limiting further comment.
Iran's mission to the United Nations had no comment Saturday.
The Soleimani family arrests did not happen in isolation. Rubio also recently revoked the visas of Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, an academic and daughter of Iran's former national security adviser Ali Larijani, and her husband, Seyed Kalantar Motamedi. Neither is believed to still be in the United States.
Ali Larijani was killed last month in a U.S.-Israel airstrike. His daughter's visa revocation, the State Department said, was "unrelated to either the protests or the war."
In early December, the State Department revoked or declined to renew the visas of several Iranian diplomats, including the deputy ambassador, and staffers at Iran's mission to the United Nations. The department confirmed Friday that those actions were taken on December 4.
Taken together, the moves amount to a systematic effort to strip legal protections from Iranian nationals whom the administration views as extensions of a hostile regime. The administration's willingness to act against high-profile targets tied to adversary governments has defined its foreign policy posture since taking office.
Qassem Soleimani commanded the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and was one of the most powerful military figures in the Middle East before a U.S. airstrike killed him near the Baghdad airport in January 2020. President Trump authorized that strike, which Iran called an act of war and which many in Washington, on both sides, regarded as the single most consequential use of military force during Trump's first term.
Soleimani's network extended far beyond the battlefield. His family's presence in the United States, living in Los Angeles on green cards obtained through an asylum process that DHS now calls fraudulent, raises uncomfortable questions about how the system allowed it in the first place.
Who approved the asylum claim in 2019 for the niece of Iran's most notorious military commander? What vetting was performed? How did multiple trips back to Iran not trigger a review? Those questions remain unanswered.
The ongoing legal battles over immigration enforcement authority suggest the administration's actions here will face judicial scrutiny. But the underlying facts, an asylum beneficiary who traveled freely to the country she claimed to fear, while publicly celebrating that country's attacks on American troops, present a difficult case for any defense attorney to spin.
The Soleimani family arrests come at a moment when ICE enforcement faces open resistance in parts of the country. Some local officials have pledged to obstruct federal immigration agents, and at least one district attorney has threatened to arrest ICE agents carrying out their duties.
Cases like Afshar's make that obstruction harder to defend. This is not a sympathetic grandmother picked up at a traffic stop. This is the relative of a foreign military commander, a commander responsible for the deaths of American service members, who allegedly used the asylum system to gain legal status she did not deserve, then used her platform to cheer on the regime that sent her uncle to wage war against the United States.
The Washington Examiner framed the arrests as part of a broader crackdown on people tied to Iran's ruling apparatus and terrorism-linked networks inside the United States. That framing fits the pattern. The administration has moved against Iranian diplomatic staff, regime-connected academics, and now a family member of the IRGC's most senior fallen commander.
Afshar and Hosseiny remain in ICE custody. Their deportation is pending. Legal challenges are expected. The Iranian government's silence, for now, is notable but unlikely to last.
The larger question is not whether these two individuals will be removed. It is how many others like them remain in the country, holding legal status obtained under questionable circumstances, living well on the freedoms of a nation they openly despise.
A country that cannot, or will not, remove people who cheer for its enemies while enjoying its protections is a country that has stopped taking its own survival seriously.
