Federal agents moved in this week to arrest three Iranian nationals following a direct order from Secretary of State Marco Rubio to strip them of their legal residency.
The group, now in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, includes Seyed Eissa Hashemi, his wife Maryam Tahmasebi, and their son. They are currently awaiting formal removal from the country.
The enforcement action is drawing significant attention due to Hashemi’s parentage. He is the son of Masoumeh Ebtekar, a woman known to history as “Screaming Mary.” Ebtekar gained international notoriety as the English-speaking face of the 1979 Tehran embassy siege, where 52 Americans were held captive for 444 days.
During the crisis, she acted as a media intermediary, famously pushing propaganda that suggested the hostages were being treated humanely while they were actually enduring mock executions and physical abuse. Ebtekar later climbed the political ladder in Tehran, serving as a vice president for the Iranian regime as recently as 2021.
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Hashemi and his family originally arrived in the United States in 2014. By June 2016, the Obama administration had granted them green cards through the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program. That program has since been suspended under the current administration.
This sweep is part of a broader, more aggressive push by the State Department to target relatives of high-ranking Iranian officials living on American soil.
Just last week, Secretary Rubio terminated the legal status of Hamideh Afshar Soleimani and her daughter—the niece and grandniece of the late IRGC Major General Qasem Soleimani. Both are now in federal custody.
In a similar move, the administration also revoked the residency of Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, whose father once headed Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, and her husband. According to officials, the couple has already left the country and is permanently barred from returning.
In a statement following the arrests, the administration made its stance clear, noting it “will never allow America to become a home for foreign nationals tied to anti-American terrorist regimes.”
The State Department credited the Department of Homeland Security and ICE for the coordination required to track down and detain the individuals mentioned in the release.
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