Two relatives of slain Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani lived in the United States for nearly a decade, winning asylum, obtaining green cards, and in one case nearly reaching citizenship, before federal officials finally caught up with the glaring holes in the system that let them in. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced he had revoked their green cards, and both women are now in ICE custody in Los Angeles awaiting removal.
The arrests came just days after U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued a blunt March 30 alert declaring that prior screening and vetting measures were “wholly inadequate” and had exposed the country to “significant national security and public safety risks.” The case of Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and Sarinasadat Hosseiny, Soleimani’s niece and grandniece, respectively, now stands as Exhibit A for that assessment.
The timeline alone should unsettle any American who assumed the immigration system could distinguish friend from foe. And the details that followed the arrests raise harder questions about how an asylum system built to protect the persecuted became a doorway for those who openly celebrated the persecution of Americans.
Acting Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis told Fox News Digital that Soleimani Afshar entered the United States on a tourist visa in June 2015. Hosseiny followed one month later, in July 2015, on a student visa. Both women were granted asylum by an immigration judge in 2019.
Soleimani Afshar became a lawful permanent resident in 2021, squarely during the Biden administration. Hosseiny received her green card in 2023. And last July, Soleimani Afshar filed a naturalization application, the final step toward full U.S. citizenship.
That application revealed something the vetting system apparently missed for years. Soleimani Afshar disclosed that she had traveled to Iran at least four times since receiving her green card. Bis said those trips “illustrate her asylum claims were fraudulent.” An asylum applicant, after all, claims to be fleeing persecution by the government of her home country. Voluntarily returning, repeatedly, raises an obvious question about whether the fear was ever real.
Rubio did not mince words. He described Soleimani Afshar as “an outspoken supporter of the Iranian regime who celebrated attacks on Americans and referred to our country as the ‘Great Satan.'”
The Washington Times reported that the State Department went further, saying Afshar had, while living in the United States, “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 organization.”
That is not the profile of someone who fled Iran in fear. It is the profile of someone who used the asylum system as a convenience, and whose conduct, once inside the country, aligned with the very regime she claimed to be escaping.
The broader pattern is one that should concern anyone who takes border security seriously. As federal prosecutors have shown in other high-profile immigration cases, the consequences of institutional failure in screening and enforcement fall on ordinary Americans.
Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, offered a blunt explanation. He described the standard for granting asylum as “pathetically low.”
Hankinson told Fox News Digital:
“Some immigration judges apply the standards properly; others are incredibly lax, for altruistic or ideological reasons.”
He speculated that the two women likely “made a case that they were being persecuted by the Iranian regime.” In theory, that is not impossible. Relatives of dictators sometimes do break with their families. But the evidence here points the other way.
Hankinson put it plainly:
“This wouldn’t be impossible, there are relatives of dictators and bad guys who do oppose their own families. But it appears these women didn’t, they supported the regime, its proxies, and policy. They reportedly returned for visits.”
He also described a broader phenomenon that goes well beyond Iran. Children and relatives of regime officials from China, Cuba, Russia, and other repressive states routinely enter the United States, buy homes, attend college, and stay, Hankinson said. Some may have genuine asylum claims. Most, in his assessment, are “spending their parents’ money.”
The pattern is familiar to anyone who has watched the consequences of institutional lapses in the criminal justice system: the rules exist on paper, but enforcement depends on the judgment, and sometimes the ideology, of the people applying them.
The USCIS alert issued on March 30 did not name the Soleimani relatives specifically. But its language was sweeping. The agency said it had “ascertained that prior screening and vetting measures were wholly inadequate” and that “many applicants for naturalization and lawful permanent residence were not sufficiently vetted.”
Some of those applicants, the agency said, “should not have been” approved.
USCIS announced it was placing a hold and review on all pending asylum applications and benefit applications filed by aliens from high-risk countries. It said the action was taken in accordance with executive orders and presidential proclamations by President Trump mandating stricter screening and vetting.
A separate USCIS policy memo said the agency would conduct a comprehensive re-review, potential interview, and re-interview of all aliens from high-risk countries who entered the United States on or after the day former President Joe Biden took office. The memo added that, “when appropriate,” the agency would “extend this review and re-interview process to aliens who entered the United States outside of this timeframe.”
The scope of that commitment is significant. It amounts to an admission that the vetting apparatus under the prior administration was not merely flawed in isolated cases but systematically deficient, and that the damage may extend well beyond the Biden era.
USCIS said it is developing a “layered vetting plan” to address the gaps. What that plan looks like in practice, and whether it catches the next case before a naturalization application lands on someone’s desk, remains to be seen.
Rubio’s announcement that he had revoked the green cards of Soleimani’s relatives and that both women were in ICE custody pending removal drew confirmation from multiple outlets. The Washington Examiner reported that federal law enforcement arrested Afshar and her daughter in Los Angeles, and that the State Department said Afshar had celebrated attacks against American soldiers and military facilities in the Middle East.
Bis emphasized the stakes in plain terms:
“It is a privilege to be granted a green card to live in the United States of America. If we have reason to believe a green card holder poses a threat to the U.S., the green card will be revoked.”
The White House declined to comment on the arrests and referred inquiries to the State Department. The State Department, in turn, referred Fox News Digital to the Department of Homeland Security. That bureaucratic shuffle is its own small commentary on how Washington handles sensitive cases, even ones where the facts are already public.
The episode also fits a broader pattern of federal agencies taking more aggressive enforcement postures. FBI Director Kash Patel recently warned that anyone who threatens law enforcement will face consequences, a signal that the current administration intends to back its agencies when they act.
Several important details remain unclear. What specific evidence did officials rely on to conclude that Soleimani Afshar supported the Iranian regime and celebrated attacks on Americans? What immigration court granted both women asylum in 2019, and what evidence did that judge consider? What exactly are the “high-risk countries” covered by the USCIS hold and review?
And perhaps most pressing: how many other cases like this one are sitting in the system, undetected, waiting for a naturalization application or a routine review to surface what the original vetting missed?
Qasem Soleimani was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American service members through the Iranian-backed militias and proxy forces he directed across the Middle East. President Trump ordered the drone strike that killed him in 2020. That his relatives were living comfortably in the United States, on asylum status, no less, while one of them allegedly praised the regime he served is not just an intelligence failure. It is a failure of basic common sense.
The accountability failures that allowed this to happen are not unique to immigration. Federal fraud cases targeting taxpayer-funded programs reveal the same underlying problem: systems built on trust that lack the enforcement muscle to catch people who exploit them.
A vetting system that cannot identify the niece of America’s most dangerous foreign adversary is not a vetting system. It is a suggestion box.
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