Secretary of State Marco Rubio terminated the green cards of three Iranian nationals with direct family ties to one of the most notorious figures from the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, and ICE agents arrested them this week in Los Angeles. Federal officials plan to remove Seyed Eissa Hashemi, his wife Maryam Tahmasebi, and their son from the United States, the New York Post reported.

The action came roughly a week after the arrest of two relatives of the late Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, and on the same Saturday that current members of the post-1979 Islamic regime were engaged in diplomatic talks with the United States in Pakistan.

Hashemi, 43, is the son of Masoumeh Ebtekar, the woman known as "Screaming Mary" who served as the propaganda mouthpiece for the militants who stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. She later rose to senior positions inside the Islamic regime. Her son, meanwhile, had been living comfortably in Los Angeles, teaching as an adjunct associate professor at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology.

The State Department's case against the family

The State Department did not mince words about Ebtekar's role in the hostage crisis. In its Saturday announcement, the department described how she operated during the 444-day ordeal:

"[She] crafted propaganda falsely showing the humane treatment of the hostages, arranging staged interviews in which the American hostages were pressured to describe their treatment in positive terms, even as they were being held in solitary confinement, blindfolded and starved, and subjected to physical and psychological terror, including beatings and mock executions."

That her son held a green card and lived freely in the United States for years raises an obvious question: how did it take this long?

Hashemi graduated from the University of Tehran in 2006 and reportedly moved to the United States in 2010, where he pursued a PhD in organizational leadership at the Chicago School. His wife, Tahmasebi, is a psychology professor. The couple and their son were taken into ICE custody this week and now face removal proceedings.

The administration has framed these enforcement actions as part of a broader national-security posture. Fox News reported that Rubio posted on X about the revocations, writing that Ebtekar "was the spokeswoman for the Islamic terrorists who stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostages for 444 days."

Rubio was blunt about the policy's intent:

"America can never become home for anti-American terrorists or their families, and under the Trump administration, it never will."

Soleimani relatives arrested days earlier

The Hashemi family arrests did not happen in isolation. About a week earlier, ICE agents arrested Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, 47, the niece of Gen. Qasem Soleimani, at her California home on April 3. She was being held in an ICE detention center in Texas at the time of the latest arrests.

Sarinasadat Hosseiny, 25, Soleimani's grandniece, was also taken into custody. The Post reported that Hosseiny had been posting about her Los Angeles lifestyle and outfits on social media before her arrest, a jarring image for anyone familiar with the trail of American blood linked to her great-uncle's Quds Force operations.

The Trump administration has directed ICE operations across the country in recent months, and the pattern is clear: federal enforcement is no longer treating immigration status as a bureaucratic abstraction disconnected from national security.

Daughter of slain Iranian official also stripped of status

The sweep extended beyond the Hashemi and Soleimani families. Rubio also terminated the legal status of Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, the daughter of Ali Larijani, described as a top Iranian security official who was killed last month in a U.S.-Israel attack. Her husband, Seyed Kalantar Motamedi, was also targeted.

The State Department said the couple "are no longer in the United States and are barred from future entry." Whether they left voluntarily or were removed is not specified in available reporting.

Newsmax reported that the State Department said the actions were aimed at "keeping Americans safe," placing the revocations squarely within the administration's broader immigration-enforcement framework.

A pattern of federal enforcement under Trump

The arrests fit a recognizable pattern. The administration has moved aggressively to use existing federal authority, from ICE operations to State Department visa and green-card revocations, to target individuals it views as threats or beneficiaries of a broken immigration system. The FBI's recent capture of a top-ten fugitive and other high-profile enforcement actions reflect the same posture: find them, arrest them, remove them.

What makes the Iranian cases distinctive is the sheer audacity of the arrangement they exposed. The son of the woman who orchestrated propaganda to cover up the torture of American hostages was living in Los Angeles, teaching at an American university, holding a green card issued by the same government his mother helped humiliate. Soleimani's relatives were posting glamour shots on social media from the city that hosts the largest Iranian diaspora community in the country.

These are not cases of distant, attenuated connections. Hashemi is Ebtekar's son. Afshar is Soleimani's niece. Ardeshir-Larijani is Larijani's daughter. The family ties are direct and undeniable.

The administration has also been directing federal investigators toward fraud and abuse across multiple agencies, and the Iranian green-card revocations share a common thread with those efforts: the idea that the federal government should actually enforce the rules it writes.

Open questions remain

Several details remain unclear. The specific legal authority Rubio used to terminate the green cards has not been publicly identified. The name and immigration status of the Hashemi couple's son have not been disclosed. The exact ICE detention facility in Texas holding Soleimani Afshar has not been named.

It is also unclear how these individuals obtained lawful permanent resident status in the first place, and whether any prior administration reviewed their applications with knowledge of their family connections. That question matters. If the answer is yes, then prior officials knowingly approved green cards for the children of people who participated in or enabled acts of terror against Americans. If the answer is no, it points to a screening failure that persisted for years.

Either way, the result was the same: relatives of some of Iran's most prominent anti-American figures lived freely in the United States, enjoyed its protections, and, in at least one case, built professional careers at American institutions. Meanwhile, ICE agents continue to track down dangerous individuals who exploited gaps in the immigration system to settle in American communities.

The 52 Americans held hostage in Tehran endured 444 days of blindfolds, solitary confinement, mock executions, and beatings, all while Masoumeh Ebtekar staged interviews to make the world believe they were being treated humanely. Decades later, her son had a green card and a teaching job in Los Angeles.

That arrangement is over now. The only real question is why it took so long to end.