Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained the niece of deceased Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani and her daughter in Los Angeles on Friday, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked their green cards and accused the elder woman of promoting Iranian regime propaganda while living large in the United States.
Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, 47, and her daughter Sarinasadat Hosseiny, 25, now sit in ICE custody pending removal. The State Department issued a press release following the arrests accusing Afshar of having "praised the new Iranian Supreme Leader, denounced America as the 'Great Satan' and voiced her unflinching support for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a designated terrorist organisation."
The case lays bare a pattern that should trouble every American who believes immigration benefits are a privilege, not a birthright: a woman with direct family ties to one of Iran's most notorious military figures obtained asylum, a green card, and a $740,000 home in the hills above Los Angeles, all while, the government says, she traveled back to Iran repeatedly and cheered the regime that calls for America's destruction.
The timeline tells the story. The Daily Mail reported that Afshar first entered the United States in June 2015 on a tourist visa. Hosseiny arrived with her mother on a student visa that same year. By 2019, a judge had granted both women asylum.
Afshar received her green card in 2021. That September, she purchased a two-bedroom, two-bath house in the Tujunga neighborhood of Los Angeles for $505,000, financing $365,000 of it with a mortgage. Public records now value the property at $740,000, perched on a hill overlooking the Crescenta Valley and the Verdugo Mountains. Hosseiny received her own green card in 2023.
Then came the detail that, if confirmed, makes the asylum grants look hollow. The Department of Homeland Security stated that in a July 2025 naturalization application, Afshar herself disclosed traveling to Iran at least four times since receiving her green card. DHS called her original asylum claims "fraudulent." The logic is straightforward: if you claim you cannot safely return to a country, then fly back there four times on your own, the claim collapses.
Rubio announced the revocations in blunt terms. Fox News reported that the Secretary of State wrote on social media:
"This week, I terminated both Afshar and her daughter's legal status and they are now in ICE custody, pending removal from the United States."
He continued:
"The Trump Administration will not allow our country to become a home for foreign nationals who support anti-American terrorist regimes."
The State Department's press release went further, alleging Afshar had "pushed regime propaganda while enjoying a lavish lifestyle in Los Angeles, as attested to by her frequent posting on her recently deleted Instagram account." That last detail, the recently deleted account, suggests someone tried to scrub the evidence after the walls started closing in.
The administration's broader posture on national security and Iran policy has sharpened considerably in recent months, and this case fits squarely within that trend.
Before the account vanished, Afshar and Hosseiny had posted extensively. Photos showed expensive cars, designer clothing, helicopter rides, and poolside scenes. Hosseiny appeared clubbing in Miami, partying in Las Vegas, and vacationing in Alaska. The imagery painted a picture of two women enjoying every freedom the United States offers, freedoms that would get women arrested, beaten, or worse in the Iran whose regime Afshar allegedly championed.
That contrast is not incidental. The State Department specifically cited it. Women in Tehran face arrest and abuse for dress-code violations. Yet Afshar, the government alleged, praised the regime's leadership while living a life in Los Angeles that the regime's own morality police would never permit.
It is worth noting that the broader legal environment around immigration enforcement remains contentious, and any deportation proceeding could face judicial challenges.
Narjes Soleimani, the daughter of the slain general, issued a statement disputing the entire premise. She said her father's family had never lived in the United States and that Qasem Soleimani had two nephews, not nieces. Her statement was direct:
"The individuals arrested in the US have no connection whatsoever to Martyr Soleimani and the claims made by the US State Department are false."
Whether that denial holds up remains an open question. The State Department and Rubio both identified Afshar as Soleimani's niece. The surname alone, Soleimani Afshar, invites scrutiny, though surnames and family structures in Iran do not always map neatly onto Western assumptions. What is not in dispute is that the U.S. government moved to strip both women of their legal status and detain them.
Afshar and Hosseiny are not the only Iranian-connected individuals to lose their residency status. National Review reported that Rubio earlier this month also terminated the legal status of Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, the daughter of veteran Iranian politician Ali Larijani, and her husband Seyed Kalantar Motamedi. Both are no longer in the United States and have been barred from entry, the State Department said.
Ali Larijani, described as an architect of Iran's security policy, was killed in mid-March in a U.S.-Israeli air attack. The revocations of his daughter's status came afterward.
The pattern is clear. The administration is identifying foreign nationals in the United States who have ties to Iran's military and political apparatus, examining their immigration histories, and moving to strip their status when the record supports it. Newsmax reported that federal agents took the two women into custody Friday night as part of this broader effort.
The name at the center of this case still carries weight. Qasem Soleimani joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in his early twenties and rose to command the Quds Force in 1998. The Quds Force operates as Iran's primary instrument for projecting military power abroad, running proxy wars, arming militias, and organizing attacks across the Middle East.
The United States and Israel designated Soleimani as a terrorist in 2011. In 2019, the Trump administration listed the entire Quds Force as a foreign terrorism group. On January 3, 2020, a U.S. Reaper drone strike ordered by President Trump killed Soleimani at Baghdad airport.
The strike prompted the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to call for public mourning and "forceful revenge," declaring that Soleimani's "departure to God does not end his path or his mission." The reverberations of that strike continue to shape U.S.-Iran relations and, now, immigration enforcement.
The administration has since taken an even more assertive stance on Iran. The broader context of major legal and policy battles around immigration authority only adds to the significance of these individual enforcement actions.
Afshar's husband has also been barred from entering the United States, the State Department said. No further details about him appeared in the government's statements.
One question the government has not publicly answered: why was Hosseiny's status revoked? DHS accused Afshar of fraudulent asylum claims based on her Iran travel. The State Department accused Afshar of promoting regime propaganda. But the public record does not show parallel accusations against the daughter. Rubio's statement lumped them together. Whether that grouping survives legal scrutiny is an open matter.
The broader question, though, is how this happened in the first place. A woman the government now identifies as the niece of one of the world's most notorious designated terrorists entered on a tourist visa, won asylum, obtained a green card, bought a house, and, the government alleges, flew back to Iran four times. The system that allowed every one of those steps deserves at least as much scrutiny as the women themselves.
The administration's willingness to act on cases like these reflects a posture that extends across multiple areas of national security and personnel decisions inside the White House.
A country that cannot keep track of who it lets in, and what they do once they arrive, is a country that has stopped taking its own security seriously. Revoking a green card after the fact is better than nothing. But it is no substitute for a system that never should have handed one over to begin with.
