State Dept revokes Iranian asylees' green cards on debunked Soleimani-relation claim

On April 3, 2026, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, 47, and her 25-year-old daughter Sarina Hosseiny at their home outside Los Angeles. The arrests followed a public statement issued the same day by Secretary of State Marco Rubio under the headline "Secretary Rubio Revokes Green Cards of Foreign Nationals with Ties to Iranian Terror Regime," in which he identified the women as the "niece and grand niece" of slain Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and described them as "green card holders living lavishly in the United States." Both women had held lawful permanent resident status under an asylum grant first awarded in 2019 on the basis of persecution risk in Iran after Sarina's adolescent dance performance was broadcast on a satellite channel banned by the Iranian government. The official action was preceded by March 8 posts on X by right-wing activist Laura Loomer urging the State Department to act on the women.

A Drop Site News investigation published April 22, 2026, reviewed Iranian birth records, identification papers, a family will, and other personal documentation pertaining to the Soleimani-Afshar family. The reporting found the family's recorded origins trace generations back to Yazd province in central Iran, and that Hamideh's father — born in Tehran in 1947 — had no brothers, making the State Department's claimed uncle-niece relationship genealogically impossible. Soleimani's own surviving daughters, Zeinab and Narjes Soleimani, issued separate public statements in Iranian media stating that the detained women have no connection to their family and that no member of the Soleimani family resides in the United States. Asked to address the documentary rebuttal, Assistant Secretary of State Dylan Johnson, of the Office of the Spokesperson, said the State Department stood by Rubio's determination and invoked "classified intelligence," declining to engage the specifics of the documentary record.

Despite the unraveling of the stated factual basis, the women remain held at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in San Antonio pending removal to Iran. Hamideh has autoimmune hemolytic anemia, a chronic condition that requires regular blood transfusions. Friends in contact with the family report that the facility has told them it lacks the equipment to perform a matched transfusion — Sarina is a potential donor — and that Hamideh has been treated with antibiotics in lieu of transfusion, with dangerously low hemoglobin levels and at least one episode in which she lost consciousness on the floor for more than ten minutes before being attended to. The entry records this event as an instance of due-process denial in immigration enforcement, unlawful detention sustained after the government's stated predicate was rebutted by primary documentary evidence, targeting of a marginalized national-origin community, and corrections abuse in the form of custodial denial of medically necessary treatment for a known chronic condition.