Iranian academic detained in Texas over 1979 hostage ties describes conditions

Lawyer says US has presented no evidence supporting national security rationale

Maryam Tahmasebi, an Iranian psychology and statistics professor who has lived in Los Angeles since 2014, has been held at a US immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas, since April, after the State Department revoked her family’s green cards over her mother-in-law’s role as translator for the students who seized the US embassy in Tehran in 1979.

Tahmasebi and her teenage son remain at the Dilley facility, while her husband, Seyed Eissa Hashemi, is being held at a separate South Texas Detention Facility in Pearsall under conditions Tahmasebi described as “horrible.”

In an essay published by The Nation magazine and written from inside the Dilley facility, Tahmasebi accused the US government of “bloodline punishment.” Jack Mirkinson, a senior editor at The Nation, said Tahmasebi had limited email access and submitted the piece with help from her lawyer.

“We have been put through hell for the past four months, and our physical and mental health have deteriorated in ways that might not be reversible for years,” Tahmasebi wrote.

The State Department cited Hashemi’s family ties in announcing the revocation. His mother, Masoumeh Ebtekar, became known as “Screaming Mary” or “Sister Mary” for her English-language statements on behalf of the students who occupied the US embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Ebtekar later held several Iranian government roles, including vice president for women and family affairs, though she has not held a government position since 2021.

“The government had decided to punish my husband for being the son of a woman who was a translator for the Iranian hostage takers in 1979, before Eissa was even born,” Tahmasebi wrote.

“I came here because I wanted to build a life for myself and my family that was defined by my own actions, not anyone else’s,” she added. “But now our lives are being upended for something someone else did nearly 50 years ago.”

The revocation was announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio less than a week after a January 2026 online petition called for Hashemi’s deportation and a few conservative US outlets published reports outside the family’s residence. Rubio’s announcement did not specify whether Hashemi or Tahmasebi had themselves committed wrongdoing or posed a national security threat.

State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said the agency “does not divulge protected, sensitive, or classified information pertaining to the termination of legal status of foreign nationals” and that the government retains the right to terminate the legal status of foreign nationals who “pose a threat to the national security interests of the US.”

Maria Kari, a member of Tahmasebi and Hashemi’s legal team, disputed that rationale. “The state department has not charged this family under any national security provision of the immigration laws,” Kari told the BBC. “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. In fact, no US government agency has presented any evidence to support their allegations.”

Tahmasebi and Hashemi entered the US legally in 2014 on visas and became lawful permanent residents in 2016. Before their arrest, both worked in academia in Los Angeles. A federal judge temporarily blocked their deportation after their lawyers challenged the detention and filed for their release.

In her essay, Tahmasebi wrote that the family had attempted to leave the United States voluntarily but that the government had opposed their request. The Department of Homeland Security declined the family’s request for voluntary departure in July, according to records provided by Tahmasebi’s lawyers.

“In other words, they want to continue our indefinite detention without any end in sight,” Tahmasebi wrote.

A government attorney wrote that DHS would consider a “stipulated removal,” in which a noncitizen waives the right to a hearing before entering deportation proceedings. A DHS spokesperson, asked to comment, pointed to the agency’s app-based voluntary departure programme and said: “Being in detention is a choice. We encourage all illegal aliens to take control of their departure with the CBP Home App.”

The Tahmasebi-Hashemi case is among several enforcement actions the US has taken against relatives of Iranian officials as hostilities with Iran have escalated this year. The US government has also terminated the legal status of two Iranian women it initially identified as the niece and grandniece of IRGC Major General Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a US strike in 2020. Soleimani’s family later denied that the women were related to him, and subsequent reporting has cast doubt on the US government’s claim.

The State Department also revoked legal status for the daughter of former Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran Ali Larijani. Diaspora activists had identified relatives of Iranian officials abroad during Iran’s crackdown on protesters months earlier and campaigned to revoke their legal status.