The US decision to revoke the family’s status came amid several enforcement actions taken against relatives of regime officials, as US hostilities with Iran escalated this year.
At the same time, amid Iran’s brutal crackdown on protesters months ago, some diaspora activists identified relatives of Iranian officials abroad and campaigned to revoke their legal status.
An online petition in January 2026 called for Hashemi’s deportation from the US due to his mother’s involvement in the hostage crisis. A few conservative US outlets carried reports from outside Hashemi’s residence in the US in April.
Less than a week later, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the US would revoke the family’s status.
Rubio’s announcement did not specify whether Hashemi or Tahmasebi had committed wrongdoing or posed a national security threat themselves.
The agency “does not divulge protected, sensitive, or classified information pertaining to the termination of legal status of foreign nationals”, state department spokesman Tommy Pigott said in a statement.
He said the government retained 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-Hashemi’s legal team, told the BBC that the state department “has not charged this family under any national security provision of the immigration laws”.
“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,” Kari said. “In fact, no US government agency has presented any evidence to support their allegations.”
Prior to their arrest, Tahmasebi and Hashemi lived in Los Angeles and worked in academia. They entered the US legally in 2014 on visas, and became lawful permanent residents in 2016.
A federal judge temporarily blocked their deportation after lawyers challenged the family’s detention and filed for their release.
In her essay for The Nation, Tahmasebi wrote that her family had attempted to self-deport – which means making a voluntary decision to leave a country – but added that the US government opposed their request.
“In other words, they want to continue our indefinite detention without any end in sight,” she wrote.
The US Department of Homeland Security declined the family’s request for voluntary departure in July, according to records provided by Tahmasebi’s lawyers.
A government attorney wrote that DHS would consider what is known as a stipulated removal, in which a noncitizen waives their right to a hearing before entering into deportation proceedings.
A DHS spokesperson, when asked to comment on the family’s request, pointed the BBC to its app-based voluntary departure programme as a means for non-citizens to leave the country.
“Being in detention is a choice,” the DHS statement said. “We encourage all illegal aliens to take control of their departure with the CBP Home App.”
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 status for daughter of former Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran Ali Larijani.
Roja Assadi contributed to this report.