Overview
- Federal agents detained Seyed Eissa Hashemi, his wife Maryam Tahmasebi, and their son on Saturday after Secretary of State Marco Rubio terminated their lawful permanent resident status, and they are now in ICE custody pending removal.
- The State Department identified Hashemi as the son of Masoumeh Ebtekar, the English-language face of the 1979 Tehran embassy takeover, and linked the family to the Iranian regime.
- Homeland Security said agents acted because the three posed a clear threat to U.S. national security and foreign policy.
- State Department records say the family entered the U.S. on 2014 visas and obtained green cards in June 2016 through the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, which the administration has since suspended.
- Officials cast the arrests as part of a broader campaign that recently targeted relatives of Qasem Soleimani and the daughter of Ali Larijani, pointing to sharper scrutiny of regime-linked relatives living in the United States.