Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, the 47-year-old niece of slain Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander Gen. Qasem Soleimani, placed a call Monday from an ICE detention facility in Pearsall, Texas, to a 68-year-old Los Angeles retiree she once befriended. He declined to accept it.
Maziar Aflaki told the New York Post he wants nothing to do with Afshar, a woman he described as "manipulative" and "very dangerous." The rejected phone call is the latest chapter in a case that has exposed how a relative of one of America's most lethal foreign adversaries obtained asylum, a green card, and years of comfortable living in Southern California before the Trump administration finally stepped in.
The facts of Afshar's immigration history read like a case study in system failure. She entered the United States in 2015 on a tourist visa. She was granted asylum in 2019, the same year her daughter, Sarinasadat Hosseiny, now 25, also received asylum after arriving on a student visa. Afshar became a lawful permanent resident in 2021. Hosseiny got her green card in 2023.
Then came the detail that apparently caught the government's attention. In a 2025 naturalization application, Afshar revealed she had made four trips back to Iran since receiving her green card, the same country whose regime she had claimed to be fleeing.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked the permanent resident status of both Afshar and Hosseiny. ICE agents detained the pair at Afshar's Tujunga home on April 3. A statement released the following Saturday confirmed the revocations were tied to what officials called the women's alleged ties to the Iranian regime.
The Department of Homeland Security was blunt in its assessment. "Her trips to Iran illustrate her asylum claims were fraudulent," DHS stated. The State Department described Afshar as an "outspoken supporter of the totalitarian, terrorist regime in Iran" who promoted "Iranian regime propaganda."
Rubio himself posted on social media about the case, referencing "green card holders living lavishly in the United States." As National Review reported, the move likely relies on 8 U.S.C. 1227(a)(4)(C), a provision that allows deportation when the Secretary of State believes an alien's presence could have serious adverse foreign-policy consequences.
On X, Rubio framed the action in broader terms. As Just The News reported, the State Department said Afshar "praised the IRGC" and "celebrated attacks against American soldiers and military facilities in the Middle East."
Rubio declared: "The Trump Administration will not allow our country to become a home for foreign nationals who support anti-American terrorist regimes." Both women remain in ICE custody pending removal.
The rejected phone call from Pearsall put a human face on the case, not Afshar's, but Aflaki's. The retiree said he met Afshar in 2016, a year after she arrived in the country. What followed, in his telling, was years of unwanted contact and emotional pressure.
Aflaki did not mince words. He told the Post:
"She scares me. I was so afraid of her. She knows how to make herself seem like an angel and you feel like the devil. I wanted someone to take her away, now it's happened."
He alleged Afshar stole a $6,500 diamond ring from him. He said she told him "I love you" despite his repeated requests to be left alone. "I said please stay away and leave me alone," Aflaki recounted.
Aflaki was not the only person in the Los Angeles Iranian-American community to describe a pattern of troubling behavior. Afshar's detention drew attention to her lifestyle and connections well before Monday's phone call.
Zare Mandani, a 54-year-old Los Angeles hairdresser, told the Post he was granted a five-year restraining order after Afshar harassed him at his salon and his home in 2024. Court filings in that case cited "emotional abuse, harassment" and alleged that Afshar "threatened to hurt herself." When Mandani heard about the ICE detention, his reaction was two words: "Thank God."
He added: "That's good. She's a stalker."
Aflaki went further, calling Afshar "a professional troublemaker" who "takes advantage of every man she knows." He said he had spent years "suffering" and "wanted to have my life back." He expressed relief that she was facing removal: "They should all be deported."
Gen. Qasem Soleimani commanded the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force before a U.S. air strike killed him in January 2020, an operation ordered during the first Trump administration. He was responsible for the deaths and wounding of hundreds of American service members through the proxy forces he directed across the Middle East.
That his niece managed to secure asylum in the United States, and then travel back to Iran four times, raises hard questions about how the system processed her claims. Rubio's decision to revoke the green cards and initiate removal proceedings was the first concrete government action to address those questions.
Breitbart reported that the State Department framed the arrests as part of a broader crackdown on relatives of senior Iranian regime figures. Rubio wrote on X that Afshar "celebrated attacks on Americans and referred to our country as the 'Great Satan.'"
Afshar's husband, Hasan Hosseiny, lives in Iran and has been banned from the United States. That detail alone should have drawn scrutiny to Afshar's asylum claim years ago. An applicant who claims persecution by a regime, then marries someone who remains in that country and visits four times, is not exactly the profile of a genuine refugee.
The Afshar case is not the only one raising alarms. The Post also revealed Monday that Eissa Hashemi, a 43-year-old college professor and lecturer at the Chicago School in Claremont, a $20,000-a-year institution east of Los Angeles, has been living an affluent Southern California lifestyle. Critics have called for his removal from the country.
Hashemi's mother is Masoumeh Ebtekar, known as "Screaming Mary," who promoted the militants who stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Ebtekar later rose to become Vice President for Women and Family Affairs in the Iranian government.
One Instagram poster wrote that "Mr. Hashemi has never publicly distanced himself from his mother's actions or legacy" and argued that "Eissa Hashemi's affiliations could undermine the safety, trust, integrity, values, or commitment to human rights at an American college." The critic also called for Hashemi and his wife, Maryam Tahmasebi, to be "fired from the US as soon as possible." No government action against Hashemi has been reported.
The broader pattern is clear enough. Relatives and associates of the Iranian regime's most senior figures have been living openly in the United States, in some cases for years, while the immigration system either failed to flag their connections or chose not to act. The Trump administration's enforcement posture on ICE detention has given federal authorities new tools to address these cases, but the backlog of missed red flags is long.
Aflaki, the retiree who refused Afshar's call, offered a blunt summary of the situation. He noted with some dark humor that since her arrest, "she's become more famous than Kim Kardashian."
But the fame is beside the point. The real question is how a woman with direct family ties to the commander of the IRGC, the organization responsible for more American military casualties than any other foreign force in the 21st century, obtained asylum, a green card, and nearly a decade of life in the United States before anyone in government acted.
She entered on a tourist visa. She claimed persecution. She got asylum. She got a green card. She flew back to Iran four times. She applied for citizenship. And then, only then, did the system catch up.
The costs of a permissive immigration system are not always measured in dollars. Sometimes they are measured in the years it takes to correct a mistake that should never have been made.
Afshar is now in a detention facility in south Texas, calling people who don't want to hear from her. The system that let her in should be getting the same treatment.
