In April 2026, a Los Angeles-based academic and her family—all lawful permanent residents of the United States—were taken into immigration custody, triggering a high-profile debate over collective punishment and U.S. immigration policy amid escalating tensions with Iran. Maryam Tahmasebi, a professor of psychology and statistics, has publicly denounced the U.S. government’s actions as unjust “bloodline punishment,” after authorities revoked her family’s green cards solely over her husband’s familial connection to a 1979 Iranian hostage crisis figure.
Tahmasebi’s husband, Seyed Eissa Hashemi, is the son of Masoumeh Ebtekar, who gained international notoriety as the English-language spokesperson for the student group that seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 American citizens hostage for 444 days in 1979–1981. Ebtekar later went on to hold multiple senior positions in the Iranian government, most recently serving as vice president for women and family affairs until 2021. In a first-person account written from inside detention and published by *The Nation*, Tahmasebi emphasized that the government is penalizing her husband for actions taken by his mother decades before he was even born.
Since their arrest four months ago, the family has been held in separate immigration detention facilities across South Texas. Tahmasebi and their teenage son are currently detained at the facility in Dilley, while Hashemi is held in Pearsall, where Tahmasebi says he endures “horrible conditions.” In her essay, Tahmasebi described the four months in custody as an unrelenting ordeal, writing that the family’s physical and mental health has sustained damage that may take years to recover, if it ever does. Jack Mirkinson, senior editor at *The Nation*, confirmed Tahmasebi drafted the account from detention with extremely limited access to email, before she and her legal team submitted it for publication.
The revocation of the family’s permanent resident status is part of a broader wave of U.S. enforcement actions targeting relatives of current and former Iranian regime officials, a policy shift that comes as bilateral hostilities between Washington and Tehran have risen sharply over the course of 2026. The move also followed public pressure from Iranian diaspora activists, who have pushed for legal status revocations against relatives of Iranian officials in response to Tehran’s violent crackdown on anti-government protests late last year.
In January 2026, an online petition called for Hashemi’s deportation from the U.S. over his mother’s role in the hostage crisis, and conservative U.S. media outlets published on-the-ground reports from outside the family’s Los Angeles home in early April. Less than a week after those reports, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly announced that the government would revoke the entire family’s legal permanent resident status. Notably, Rubio’s announcement never specified that Hashemi, Tahmasebi, or their son had committed any individual wrongdoing, or that they posed an independent national security threat to the U.S.
State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott defended the policy in a formal statement, noting that the agency does not disclose protected or classified information related to the termination of foreign nationals’ legal status, and asserting that the government retains the authority to revoke status for individuals deemed a threat to U.S. national security interests. But members of the family’s legal team push back sharply against this justification, arguing that the government has failed to bring any national security charges against the family under U.S. immigration law. “If the government had any evidence that this family threatened national security, it has had several opportunities to say so but the government has not,” explained Maria Kari, a member of the defense team, speaking to the BBC. “In fact, no U.S. government agency has presented any evidence to support their allegations.”
Prior to their detention, Tahmasebi and Hashemi built quiet, law-abiding lives in Southern California’s academic community. The couple entered the U.S. legally on work visas in 2014, and successfully obtained lawful permanent resident status in 2016. After their detention, legal challenges filed by the defense team led a federal judge to issue a temporary block on the family’s deportation.
In a surprising twist that underscores the arbitrary nature of the government’s actions, Tahmasebi wrote in her essay that the family had voluntarily offered to self-deport to end their detention—only to have the request rejected by U.S. authorities. “In other words, they want to continue our indefinite detention without any end in sight,” she wrote. Official records provided by the family’s legal team confirm that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security denied their request for voluntary departure in July 2026. A government attorney instead offered to review a stipulated removal arrangement, which would require the family to waive their right to an immigration hearing before deportation proceedings begin. When contacted for comment by the BBC, a DHS spokesperson directed non-citizens seeking voluntary departure to the agency’s app-based departure program, and claimed “Being in detention is a choice.”
This case is not an isolated incident. The U.S. government has already revoked legal status for multiple other Iranian individuals based on purported familial ties to Iranian officials, including two women initially identified as relatives of deceased IRGC Major General Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a 2020 U.S. drone strike. After the announcement, Soleimani’s family denied the women were related to him, and independent subsequent reporting has raised significant questions about the accuracy of the U.S. government’s original claim. Authorities have also revoked the legal status of the daughter of Ali Larijani, former Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.