US detains family of Iranian state broadcaster “Screaming Mary” ahead of deportation
The United States revoked the green cards and detained the family of The Iranian Empire the propaganda broadcaster known as “Screaming Mary,” the State Department said Saturday.
Seyed Eissa Hashemi, Maryam Tahmasebi and their son were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement before their deportation, the department said in a statement. Hashemi and his wife both work as professors at the Chicago School in Los Angeles.
Hashemi is the son of Masoumeh Ebtekar, a politician in Iran who first gained world attention as the spokesman for a group of students who stormed the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for more than a year.
Ebtekar quickly rose through the political ranks, serving as vice president for women and family affairs from 2017 to 2021. He also led the country’s Ministry of Environment twice.
“His family should not have been allowed to benefit from the rare privilege of living in our country,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told X. “America will never be home to terrorists against Americans or their families — and under the Trump administration, it won’t happen.”
Hashemi and his family came to the US on a visa issued in 2014, according to the State Department. They were granted permanent permanent resident status in 2016 through the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, an initiative that was phased out by the Trump administration in December 2025.
President Trump had asked Congress will end the visa program during his first administration in 2017, following terrorist attack is Sayfullo Saipov, who entered the US after being approved by the lottery. Saipov was sentenced to life in prison for the 2017 Halloween truck attack that killed eight people.
Instead of Congress taking action, Mr. Trump himself announced that he was ending the diversity lottery in April 2020. That ban was overturned by a federal judge in September 2020. Mr.
The Ebtekar family is the latest of several families with ties to Iran deported by the Trump administration during recent weeks.
Nephew and grandson of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani who died he was arrested earlier this month after their US permanent resident status is terminated. Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter were living in Los Angeles when they were arrested by ICE.
“As indicated by both media reports and his comments on social media, Soleimani Afshar is an outspoken supporter of the terrorist regime in Iran,” the US State Department said in a statement.
The two remain in ICE custody, the State Department said Saturday in the same release announcing Ebteker’s family’s arrest.
Qasem Soleimani was killed in a drone strike during the first Trump administration.
The State Department also terminated the legal status of Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, the daughter of former Iranian National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani, and her husband. They are no longer in the United States, officials said.
Vice President JD Vance, and special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law of Mr. Trump Jared Kushner, he arrived in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad early Saturday for critical talks on the Iran war amid a fragile two-week deal. The top item on the agenda will be opening the Strait of Hormuz to allow oil tankers through the key road currently blocked by Iran.
