On January 3, 2020, the United States eliminated Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Major General Qasem Soleimani — the architect of Iran’s global terror network and the man personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers. The world watched. Iran raged. And justice, for once, arrived swiftly.
But what most Americans didn’t know was that members of Soleimani’s own family were living right here in the United States — and some of them weren’t keeping quiet about where their loyalties stood.
Federal agents and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have now arrested Soleimani’s niece and grandniece, taking them into custody and initiating their removal from American soil. The reason isn’t complicated. Their own words made it impossible to pretend they were here in good faith.
This isn’t guilt by association. Nobody is being punished simply for sharing a last name.
These women actively used their platforms to promote Iranian propaganda and celebrate attacks carried out against American soldiers. They praised a regime that the U.S. government has formally designated as a state sponsor of terrorism. They cheered violence against the very military that protects the nation that was giving them a place to live.
Their social media posts and public statements left little room for interpretation. This wasn’t political disagreement or cultural difference of opinion — it was open, repeated hostility toward the United States, expressed freely while they enjoyed the rights and protections that come with living here.
If that isn’t grounds for removal, it’s hard to imagine what would be.
Residency in the United States is a privilege extended to foreign nationals — not a guarantee, and not unconditional. That privilege carries a basic expectation: you are not here to undermine this country, amplify propaganda from regimes with American blood on their hands, or celebrate the killing of American troops.
The IRGC — the organization Soleimani commanded for years — is responsible for arming and training the militias that planted roadside bombs killing and maiming U.S. servicemembers across Iraq and Afghanistan. Soleimani personally oversaw the proxy operations that put Americans in body bags. Glorifying that legacy while living under the protection of the American flag isn’t a gray area. It’s a disqualifying one.
These women made their views known loudly and publicly. Federal agents took them at their word.
There will be those who frame this as government overreach — immigration law weaponized for political purposes. That argument doesn’t survive contact with the facts.
The standard here is straightforward: you cannot reside in the United States while openly celebrating violence against its military and acting as a mouthpiece for its enemies. That standard applies regardless of who your uncle or great-uncle was. If anything, the family connection to Soleimani makes their behavior more alarming, not less. These weren’t careless posts from people who didn’t know better. They were a window into deeply held views — views fundamentally incompatible with the basic responsibility that comes with living here.
America extended these women an opportunity. They used it to broadcast hostility toward the country giving them shelter.
ICE enforced the law. That isn’t cruelty. That is the system functioning exactly as it should.
Soleimani is gone. But the ideology he spent his career advancing — hatred of America, glorification of violence against its soldiers, allegiance to a regime at war with the West — doesn’t disappear with any one man.
When people carrying that ideology find their way onto American soil and begin broadcasting it openly, removal isn’t a harsh outcome. It’s the appropriate one. You don’t get to live in a country you openly despise and work against, particularly when your despising of it extends to celebrating the deaths of its soldiers.
America remembered who these women are and what they stand for. ICE showed up. And that, without question, is justice being served.
