Federal law enforcement officers arrested the niece and grand-niece of deceased Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Major General Qasem Soleimani in Los Angeles on Friday night after Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked their green cards. Both women are now in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, awaiting deportation.

Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter, Sarinasadat Hosseiny, had been living in the United States as lawful permanent residents. That status is gone. Rubio also barred Afshar's husband from entering the country.

Rubio did not attempt to soften the message. Writing on X, he laid out the case plainly:

"Afshar is the niece of deceased Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani. She is also an outspoken supporter of the Iranian regime who celebrated attacks on Americans and referred to our country as the 'Great Satan.'"

The State Department said Afshar supported Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, promoted propaganda published by the Iranian regime, and celebrated attacks against American soldiers and military facilities in the Middle East.

Over six years after President Donald Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Soleimani, the general's family members were still enjoying the privileges of American residency. That chapter is now closed.

A Timeline That Indicts the System

The immigration history of these two women reads like a case study in how a broken system rewards those who exploit it.

According to Acting Assistant DHS Secretary Lauren Bis, Afshar entered the United States in June 2015 on a tourist visa. Her daughter Hosseiny arrived that same summer on a student visa. By 2019, a judge had granted both of them asylum.

Then the Biden administration took over, and the pipeline widened. Afshar became a green card holder in 2021. Hosseiny followed in 2023. Both transitions happened under Biden's watch. The Washington Examiner reported.

But the most damning detail came from Afshar herself. Bis told the Washington Examiner:

"In July 2025, she filed a naturalization application where she disclosed she traveled to Iran at least four times since being issued a green card. Her trips to Iran illustrate her asylum claims were fraudulent."

Read that again. A woman who was granted asylum, ostensibly because she faced danger in Iran, traveled back to Iran at least four times. And then volunteered that information on a citizenship application.

Asylum exists for people fleeing persecution. It does not exist as a procedural stepping stone for regime loyalists who vacation in the country they claim to fear. Four return trips to Iran do not suggest a woman running from anything. They suggest a woman gaming the system, and a system perfectly willing to be gamed.

Not an Isolated Case

The Soleimani family deportations were not the only action Rubio took. The State Department also revoked the legal status of Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, the daughter of former Iranian national security council secretary Ali Larjani, who was killed in an Israeli strike during the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. Her husband, Seyed Kalantar Motamedi, had his visa revoked as well. Immigration officers removed both from the United States and barred them from re-entering.

A pattern is emerging, and it is the right one. The relatives of senior Iranian regime figures enjoyed years of comfortable American residency while their family members waged war, supported terror, and built a government that calls the United States the "Great Satan." That arrangement was always absurd. It is now being corrected.

What the Biden Era Let Slide

The Biden administration deserves particular scrutiny here. No one forced it to approve green cards for Soleimani's niece or her daughter. These were discretionary acts by a government that had access to the same information Rubio and DHS are now acting on.

Afshar was publicly celebrating attacks on Americans. She was promoting Iranian regime propaganda. She was supporting Tehran's supreme leader. None of this was hidden. And yet the green card went through in 2021. Her daughter followed in 2023.

The question is not complicated: Why were relatives of one of America's most notorious adversaries granted permanent residency during an administration that claimed to oppose Iranian aggression? The asylum system is supposed to filter for exactly this kind of case. A judge granted asylum in 2019. The Biden administration upgraded that status twice. At no point did anyone in the chain of command stop and ask whether the niece of Qasem Soleimani, who openly cheered violence against American troops, should be handed the keys to permanent American life.

This is what happens when immigration enforcement operates on autopilot, when the default answer is "approve" and scrutiny is treated as an inconvenience rather than a duty.

Enforcement as Foreign Policy

There is a broader principle at work. Immigration status is not just a domestic bureaucratic matter. It is leverage. It is a signal. When the United States allows the families of hostile foreign officials to live here while those officials direct violence against Americans, it sends a message of weakness. It tells Tehran that American systems can be exploited without consequence.

Rubio's actions reverse that signal. Revoking green cards, barring spouses, deporting regime-connected individuals, and publicizing the reasons why: this is enforcement that doubles as diplomacy. It tells every foreign adversary that proximity to anti-American regimes now carries a cost, even for family members who thought a green card made them untouchable.

As Rubio put it:

"Until recently, Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter were green card holders living lavishly in the United States."

Not anymore.

The Asylum Fraud Problem

Afshar's case is a clean illustration of a much larger rot. The asylum system in the United States has become a conveyor belt, processing claims with insufficient scrutiny and upgrading statuses on a timeline that rewards patience more than legitimacy.

Consider the trajectory:

• Entered on a tourist visa in 2015.
• Secure asylum by 2019.
• Obtain a green card by 2021.
• File for full citizenship by 2025.
• Travel back to the country that you claim persecuted you at least four times along the way.

Every step in that sequence should have triggered a review. The tourist-to-asylum pipeline alone deserves scrutiny. The repeated trips to Iran should have been disqualifying. Instead, the system waved her through until Rubio's State Department finally examined the file and pulled the cord.

The asylum system was built to protect the genuinely persecuted. Every fraudulent claim that slips through degrades protection for people who actually need it. Afshar's case is not a story about one bad actor. It is a story about a system that cannot distinguish between a refugee and a regime propagandist, or worse, a system that stopped trying.

Soleimani is dead. His legacy of terror against Americans is not diminished by time. And his family members no longer get to enjoy the freedoms of the nation he spent his career attacking.