On the night of April 3, 2026 — as U.S. and Israeli warplanes continued striking targets across Iran for the 36th consecutive day — federal agents in Los Angeles arrested two women who until hours before had been legal permanent residents of the United States. Their names: Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter. Their connection to the war: Soleimani Afshar is the niece of General Qasem Soleimani, the IRGC commander Donald Trump ordered killed in a drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020.
The arrest, announced Saturday morning by the State Department and confirmed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on social media, represents the Trump administration's most overt effort yet to use immigration enforcement as an instrument of wartime domestic policy. Both women are now in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody "pending removal," Rubio said.
Who Is Hamideh Soleimani Afshar?
Qasem Soleimani was arguably the most powerful military figure in Iran before his death. As commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force — the elite unit responsible for Iran's foreign military operations across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen — he was the architect of Iran's regional influence network. His killing on January 3, 2020, at Baghdad's international airport was one of the most consequential acts of Trump's first term.
Hamideh Soleimani Afshar is described in court and State Department records as his niece. She and her daughter had been living in Los Angeles as lawful permanent residents — green card holders — at least until this week. Her husband, whose name has not been publicly released by U.S. authorities, has separately been barred from entering the United States.
The State Department's formal statement accuses Soleimani Afshar of posting pro-Iranian government content on Instagram, including:
- Celebrating attacks against American soldiers and military facilities in the Middle East
- Praising Iran's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei after the U.S. and Israel killed his predecessor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at the start of the war
- Labeling the United States the "Great Satan" — the Islamic Republic's official epithet for America since the 1979 revolution
- Voicing "unflinching support" for the IRGC, which the U.S. has designated as a foreign terrorist organization
The State Department noted that Soleimani Afshar had posted this content "while enjoying a lavish lifestyle in Los Angeles." Her Instagram account was recently deleted, according to officials.
How the Green Card Was Revoked
The mechanism used to arrest Soleimani Afshar is the same one the Trump administration has deployed against several other high-profile immigration cases since January 2025: direct revocation of lawful permanent resident status by the Secretary of State, followed by immediate ICE detention.
Under U.S. immigration law, a Secretary of State can recommend or support the revocation of a green card, but formal removal requires an immigration judge's order in most circumstances. The process is often challenged in court. In multiple prior cases — including that of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student detained in March 2025 — federal courts have intervened to block or delay removal.
No court filings or legal challenges on behalf of Soleimani Afshar or her daughter had been publicly disclosed as of Saturday afternoon.
The Saturday announcement also disclosed a related action: earlier this month, Rubio terminated the legal status of Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, the daughter of Ali Larijani — a veteran Iranian politician and former secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council who was killed in a U.S.-Israeli airstrike in mid-March 2026. Ardeshir-Larijani and her husband Seyed Kalantar Motamedi have already left the United States and are permanently barred from re-entry.
The Legal and Political Context
The arrests come during a period of unprecedented pressure on Iranian-American communities and Iranian nationals living in the United States. The U.S.-Iran war, which began February 28 with coordinated U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear and military infrastructure, has fundamentally altered the legal and social landscape for the estimated 750,000 to 1 million Iranians and Iranian-Americans in the country.
Earlier Ranked coverage documented how the Trump administration deported at least 175 Iranians back to Iran on three separate flights before the war — then paused those flights when hostilities began. It remains unclear whether deportation flights to Iran have resumed.
The First Amendment and due process questions raised by the Soleimani Afshar case are significant. If the basis for revoking her green card is social media posts expressing political views — even pro-IRGC views — legal scholars and civil liberties advocates argue this implicates protected speech under U.S. constitutional law, regardless of the poster's citizenship status. The Supreme Court has long held that First Amendment protections extend to non-citizens on American soil.
The government's legal theory rests on a different foundation: that endorsement of a designated terrorist organization (the IRGC) constitutes more than protected speech — it constitutes material support for terrorism, which can be grounds for immigration revocation.
That distinction has been litigated extensively since the September 11 attacks. Courts have found that passive support or rhetorical endorsement alone typically does not meet the threshold for "material support." Active coordination, fundraising, or logistical assistance is required. Whether Soleimani Afshar's Instagram posts crossed that line will likely be the central question if the case reaches federal court.
Trump's Own Comment — and What It Reveals
In a statement following the arrest announcement, Trump said of the late general: "I killed Gen Qasem Soleimani in my first term. He was an evil genius, brilliant person, a horrible human being — the father of the roadside bomb, and he lived just horrible, what he did."
Trump added that Iran would have been "perhaps in a far better, stronger position" in the current war had Soleimani still been alive — implicitly conceding that the 2020 assassination, which was justified at the time as preventing imminent attacks, may have weakened Iran's military coordination in ways that made the current conflict more feasible for U.S. planners.
Rubio's own social media statement was blunter: "We will not allow our country to become a home for foreign nationals who support anti-American terrorist regimes."
Pattern: Iranian-Linked Immigration Enforcement During the War
The Soleimani Afshar arrest is part of a documented pattern of immigration actions targeting people with Iranian government connections since the war began:
- Salah Sarsour — President of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, a Palestinian-born legal permanent resident, was detained by ICE on March 30. His attorneys cited an Israeli military court conviction from decades ago; the government cited national security concerns related to his advocacy on the Iran war.
- Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani — Daughter of Ali Larijani (killed in a U.S.-Israeli strike). Green card terminated. Left U.S. voluntarily. Permanently barred.
- Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter — Green cards revoked. In ICE custody pending deportation.
Each case has involved the State Department invoking a combination of terrorism-related immigration grounds and national security determinations. In each case, the individuals targeted had connections — familial, political, or religious — to entities the U.S. government classifies as hostile.
Reaction and What Comes Next
As of Saturday afternoon, no civil liberties organization had publicly announced it was taking the Soleimani Afshar case. The ACLU, which has intervened in several high-profile immigration detentions during Trump's second term, had not commented.
In Iran, state media was expected to publicize the arrests heavily — consistent with the Islamic Republic's pattern of portraying U.S. actions as persecution of Iranian civilians. The IRGC and Iranian government have repeatedly cited the treatment of Iranian nationals and dual citizens in the U.S. as propaganda material since the war began.
The arrests also raise the question of where the women will be deported to. With the U.S. and Iran actively at war, deportation to Iran is legally and diplomatically fraught. A prior deportation arrangement that allowed three flights of Iranians back to the country is reportedly on hold. If courts do not intervene, the government may face a practical problem: no country willing to accept them, and a war zone as the only legal destination.
The detention of Soleimani's niece is simultaneously a wartime political statement, a legal test case, and a preview of how far the Trump administration is willing to take the intersection of immigration enforcement and military conflict on American soil.