US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has revoked the green cards of the niece and grandniece of Qassem Soleimani, the slain Iranian military commander, preparing the legal condition for their deportation.
“Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter are now in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” a state department spokesman said in a statement.
“While living in the United States, [the mother] promoted Iranian regime propaganda, celebrated attacks against American soldiers and military facilities in the Middle East, praised the new Iranian supreme leader, denounced America as the ‘Great Satan,’ and voiced her unflinching support for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a designated terror organisation,” the statement read.
Rubio’s action terminated the pair’s lawful permanent resident (LPR) status, and barred Afshar’s husband from entering the country.
Soleimani's daughter has called the state department's claims false, saying Hamideh and her daughter "have no connection whatsoever" to her father.
The move follows revocation of the legal status of Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, daughter of former secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran Ali Larijani. Her husband, Seyed Kalantar Motamedi, was also stripped of his legal status in early April.
Both are no longer in the United States and are barred from future entry, the state department said.
“The Trump Administration will not allow our country to become a home for foreign nationals who support anti-American terrorist regimes,” it stated.
A US tabloid report claims that The New York Post reported that Soleimani's 25-year-old grandniece, Sarinasadat Hosseiny, lived a “lavish” lifestyle in Los Angeles before being arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on April 3.
In her since-then deleted Instagram account, Hosseiny documented herself revelling in Miami, holidaying in Alaska and sunbathing on yachts, among other recreational activities, according to the New York Post.
Afshar, 47, also shared posts on Instagram of her lifestyle, while cheering on the Iranian regime’s brutal crackdown of thousands of Iranian protesters in February and branding Iranians abroad who criticise the Islamic Republic as “homeland-sellers,” the report added.
Soleimani’s niece entered the United States in 2015 on a tourist visa, was granted asylum in 2019 and secured a green card in 2021, according to the US Department of Homeland Security.
The head of the IRGC’s feared Quds Force, Soleimani was responsible for IRGC foreign operations and was considered by many to be the closest adviser of Iran’s now-slain supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Soleimani was killed by the US military at Baghdad Airport, along with other Iran-backed militia figure, during Donald Trump’s first term in office in 2020.
In a statement Soleimani's daughter, Narjes Soleimani, said: "The individuals arrested in the US have no connection whatsoever to Martyr Soleimani and the claims made by the US State Department are false."
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