The Trump administration has revoked the green cards or US visas of at least four Iranian nationals connected to the current or former Iranian government, including two who have been detained by immigration authorities and are to be deported.<\/p>\n
The latest actions were taken just this week when Secretary of State Marco Rubio determined they were no longer eligible for either lawful permanent resident status, or to enter the United States. The steps follow a move late last year in which the visas of several diplomats and staffers at Iran\u2019s mission to the United Nations were also revoked.<\/p>\n
In a statement on Saturday, the State Department said the niece and grand-niece of former Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps chief Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US airstrike near the Baghdad airport in 2020, had been arrested late Friday by immigration agents after Rubio revoked their green cards.<\/p>\n
\u201cHamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter are now in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement,\u201d the statement said, adding that Afshar\u2019s husband has also been banned from entering the United States.<\/p>\n
Afshar and her daughter had been living a \u201clavish lifestyle\u201d in Los Angeles for many years while publicly supporting the Iranian government and anti-American attacks, according to the statement.<\/p>\n
She is \u201can outspoken supporter of the Iranian regime who celebrated attacks on Americans and referred to our country as the \u201cGreat Satan,\u201d Rubio said in a post on X. \u201cThe Trump administration will not allow our country to become a home for foreign nationals who support anti-American terrorist regimes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Iranian mission to the UN had no comment Saturday.<\/p>\n
Afshar and her daughter are just the latest Iranians to have their legal status in the US rescinded by Rubio, who recently revoked the visas of Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, an academic and the daughter of Iran\u2019s former national security adviser Ali Larijani who was killed in a US-Israel airstrike last month. Her husband, Seyed Kalantar Motamedi, also had his visa revoked, the State Department said. Neither are still in the US.<\/p>\n
In early December, well before the surge of anti-government protests in Iran and the start of the war, the State Department revoked or declined to renew visas of several Iranian diplomats, including the deputy ambassador, and staffers at Iran\u2019s mission to the United Nations.<\/p>\n
The department said Friday that action had been taken on December 4 but declined to comment further \u201cfor privacy and security reasons\u201d except to note that it was unrelated to either the protests or the war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration has revoked the green cards or US visas of at least four Iranian nationals connected…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,917,5107,43,64,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-364810","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-immigration","10":"tag-middle-east","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-north-america","13":"tag-top-news","14":"tag-top-stories","15":"tag-topnews","16":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}