The State Department’s action lays the ground work to deport the relatives of Soleimani, a master Iranian terrorist.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced that he has rescinded the green cards of two relatives of Qasem Soleimani, the top general of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who was killed in a military attack authorized by President Trump back in January 2020 (Trump’s first term). This lays the groundwork to remove the pair from the United States.
Until recently, Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter were green card holders living lavishly in the United States.
Afshar is the niece of deceased Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani. She is also an outspoken supporter of the Iranian regime who celebrated attacks on Americans and referred to our country as the “Great Satan.”
This week, I terminated both Afshar and her daughter’s legal status and they are now in ICE custody, pending removal from the United States.
The Trump Administration will not allow our country to become a home for foreign nationals who support anti-American terrorist regimes.
I presume that Rubio is relying on the same provision of federal immigration law — Section 1227(a)(4)(C) — that he has invoked in the administration’s efforts to remove Mahmoud Khalil, among other lawfully present aliens, from the country. As is obvious from the fact that those aliens are still fighting their deportation in the courts, it can be a time-consuming removal process if the aliens contest it. The courts have been hostile, so it has proved difficult for the administration to keep the aliens detained while the litigation plays out.
Under the provision:
An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.
The legal challenge here is that it permits the arrest and expulsion of people, who have lawfully settled here, based on activity — essentially, speech — that would be constitutionally protected if engaged in by an American citizen. The challenge is especially acute when the provision is invoked against lawful permanent resident aliens (green card holders); they hold the law’s most privileged immigration status and are considered “U.S. persons” for many purposes.
That said, lawful permanent resident aliens are not citizens and do not have a constitutional right to live or be present in the United States.
The State Department could try to rely on other provisions that support exclusion or deportation of non-Americans who promote terrorist activity. Not only has our government long formally labeled Iran as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism; General Soleimani, who led the IRGC’s Quds (Jerusalem) force which established Hezbollah and coordinated other jihadist cells responsible for the killing of hundreds of Americans, was a specially designated global terrorist under U.S. law. (The IRGC itself was also designated as a foreign terrorist organization during the first Trump administration, and the Quds Force has been a specially designated global terrorist for nearly 20 years.)
Nevertheless, the terrorist promotion provisions generally require some real participation in terrorism. So far, what Rubio has publicly cited is only rhetorical support by Soleimani’s niece for the IRGC’s jihadist ideology and “death to America” ambitions, not concrete complicity in terrorist activity.
I’d note that if, as a number of us at NR urged, the president had sought — or Congress had otherwise enacted — a declaration of war against Iran, then the Alien Enemies Act (the AEA, Section 21 of Title 50, U.S. Code) would empower the president to expel nationals of our Iranian enemy. But the president eschewed such cooperation (or even much consultation) with Congress. With no declaration of war, or at least an authorization of military force in which Congress provided for the deportation of Iranian nationals, the AEA is unavailable as a basis to expel Soleimani’s relatives.