The Iranian family at the center of the case has been held in immigration facilities in Texas since early April, after U.S. authorities arrested them in Los Angeles and moved to deport them. They are asking a court to allow them to leave detention, arguing that the government has not tied their confinement to specific conduct by the family members themselves.
The family’s situation traces to the U.S. government’s decision to revoke their green cards because of their relationship to Masoumeh Ebtekar, who was known in the United States during the 1979 hostage crisis in Tehran as “Sister Mary.” Ebtekar, the spokesperson for Iran’s students who took over the U.S. Embassy, later became the first female cabinet member in the Islamic Republic, after a period during which she condemned hostages as “spies” and demanded the U.S. hand over the deposed shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
In April, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the government was revoking the family’s green cards over their ties to Ebtekar, and the Department of Homeland Security subsequently moved to deport Eissa Hashemi, his wife Maryam Tahmasebi, and their son. A lawyer for the family, Curtis Morrison, said “There’s no specific allegations related to these three individuals other than their familial relationship,” speaking to the Associated Press.
A federal judge temporarily barred the government from deporting the family after the three filed petitions challenging the legality of their detention. Court filings show the government has until this week to respond to the petitions in Texas, according to the Associated Press report.
The State Department defended the government’s authority by invoking a rarely used provision of immigration law tied to foreign-policy goals, according to a statement by State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott. Pigott said people should not be allowed to live in the United States if they have close ties to senior Iranian officials associated with anti-U.S. activities, and he argued that allowing such individuals to remain could be exploited for propaganda and would undermine U.S. efforts to deter malign activity.
Pigott’s statement did not include specific examples or evidence about the Hashemi family. The Department of Homeland Security, according to the report, said the family was arrested because authorities believe they pose a threat to national security and U.S. foreign policy, and the agency did not answer questions about the nature of that threat.
The family and supporters describe the arrests as targeted at people because of who their relatives were during a decades-old crisis. Friends and legal advocates who spoke with the Associated Press said they view the case as a broad punishment extending from family politics rather than any present-day actions by the detained individuals. One friend described the process as analogous to wartime internment, saying “I think it’s pretty hard to deny this is Japanese internment camps and World War II-level thinking,” while another said the situation feels like “a witch hunt.”
Legal experts who discussed the matter with the Associated Press said they believe there are constitutional problems with using the provision in this way. They said the administration is relying on a standard that has not been fully tested in court for legal immigrants, pointing to an immigration-law mechanism in which the secretary of state can seek removal for foreign policy reasons based on a reasonable belief that someone’s presence “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
The Hashemi family’s supporters said the couple came to the United States more than a decade ago to pursue graduate studies and later obtained green cards through a government lottery. Tahmasebi taught psychology and statistics at a community college, while Hashemi taught at a private university, and the family said they have no ties to money or power.
The case arrives as U.S. officials have pursued deportations of other relatives of Iranian officials. The State Department this year also said it was revoking the green cards of a niece and grand-niece of the late Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad in early 2020. Separately, an Iranian diaspora advocate who runs an Instagram account describing people he says have family ties to Iran’s government said he had tried for years to get the government to act.
In the Hashemi case, the family’s lawyer said the government’s position rests on ties to Ebtekar rather than conduct by the three detained people. The petitions challenging their detention are now pending in federal court after the temporary bar on deportation, as supporters and legal experts continue pressing questions about the scope of the foreign-policy authority and the constitutional limits on using it.