An Iranian woman detained for months in Texas has accused the U.S. government of ‘bloodline punishment’ after it revoked her family’s green cards over her husband’s ties to a prominent figure in Iran. Maryam Tahmasebi, a professor of psychology and statistics in Los Angeles, her husband, Seyed Eissa Hashemi, and their teenage son— all permanent residents of the U.S.—were detained by immigration agents in April.

Ties to 1979 Hostage Crisis

Their detention came as a result of Hashemi’s family links to the 1979 Iran hostage crisis; Hashemi’s mother, Masoumeh Ebtekar, was a spokesperson for the group that took dozens of Americans captive during the crisis. Ebtekar was known as ‘Screaming Mary’ or ‘Sister Mary’ for her English-language statements on behalf of the students who occupied the U.S. embassy in Iran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

The State Department cited those ties as the reason for revoking the family’s status. Tahmasebi and her son remain at a detention centre in Dilley, Texas, while her husband endures ‘horrible conditions’ at a separate South Texas Detention Facility in Pearsall, she wrote in The Nation magazine.

Detention and Health Concerns

‘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. Her account was submitted to The Nation magazine from within her detention facility, where she has limited access to email, according to Jack Mirkinson, a senior editor at The Nation.

Hashemi is the son of Masoumeh Ebtekar, who later held several Iranian government roles, including most recently vice president for women and family affairs. She has not held a government role 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 wrote. ‘But now our lives are being upended for something someone else did nearly 50 years ago.’

Legal and Political Context

The U.S. decision to revoke the family’s status came amid several enforcement actions taken against relatives of government officials, as U.S. hostilities with Iran escalated this year. At the same time, amid Iran’s enforcement action 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 U.S. due to his mother’s involvement in the hostage crisis; a few conservative U.S. outlets carried reports from outside Hashemi’s residence in the U.S. in April. Less than a week later, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the U.S. 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 U.S.’ 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 U.S. government agency has presented any evidence to support their allegations.’