An Iranian woman detained for months in Texas has accused the US 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 US - were detained by immigration agents in April.
Her husband's mother was a spokesperson for the group that took dozens of Americans captive during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis.
The State department has 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.
"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.
Tahmasebi wrote her account from inside her detention facility, where she has limited access to email, according to Jack Mirkinson, a senior editor at The Nation.
Tahmasebi and her lawyer then submitted it to the magazine, he said.
Hashemi is the son of Masoumeh Ebtekar, who became known as "Screaming Mary" or "Sister Mary" for her English-language statements on behalf of the students who occupied the US embassy in Iran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
Ebtekar later went on to hold several Iranian government roles. She was most recently vice president for women and family affairs, but 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."
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.
