Son, daughter-in-law, grandson of ex-Iran VP held in US ICE detention for 4 months

Maryam Tahmasebi, a psychology and statistics professor at Los Angeles Pierce College, says she has spent more than four months in US immigration detention with her teenage son while her husband, Eissa Hashemi, remains held at a separate facility.

The family, who are lawful permanent residents with valid green cards, were detained in April after the US government revoked their permanent residency, according to Tahmasebi and US officials.

Hashemi is the son of Masoumeh Ebtekar, a former Iranian vice president who served as vice president for women and family affairs and was also the English-language spokeswoman for the Iranian students who seized the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979.

Tahmasebi said her family’s ordeal began on April 9, when she was teaching a class and her son texted her that his father had failed to pick him up from school and was not answering his phone.

She said she picked up her son, returned home and contacted police because she feared something had happened to her husband. It never occurred to her, she said, that he could have been detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“We are legal permanent residents with valid green cards,” Tahmasebi wrote in a first-person account. She said neither she nor her husband has a criminal record, “not even a traffic ticket.”

Hashemi is also a professor and has dedicated his career to mentoring PhD students in the Business Psychology department of The Chicago School, Tahmasebi said. She added that the couple had mentored numerous doctoral students, including US military veterans.

Tahmasebi said she believed that if there were any problem with the family’s immigration status, the government would notify them through legal channels.

Instead, she said, she was shocked to discover that the government had moved to revoke their green cards without notifying them or providing what she described as due process.

US officials said in April that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had terminated the lawful permanent resident status of Hashemi, Tahmasebi and their son, and that the three were placed in ICE custody pending removal proceedings. The State Department identified Hashemi as Ebtekar’s son.

Tahmasebi attributed the government's action to her husband's family background, saying his mother had served as a translator and spokeswoman for the Iranian students who occupied the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979, before Hashemi was born.

“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, describing the situation as “bloodline punishment.”

She said that after discovering that her husband was being held at an ICE center in downtown Los Angeles, she spoke with him briefly. He told her that while he was under arrest, she and their son were safe.

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The following day, Tahmasebi said, federal Department of Homeland Security vehicles surrounded her car as she took her son to school.

She said she watched her teenage son being handcuffed before the two were transferred overnight from Los Angeles to Texas.

Tahmasebi said she and her son have spent more than 120 days at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, while Hashemi has been held separately at the South Texas Detention Center in Pearsall.

She said officials rejected her request to have her husband reunited with them at Dilley, telling her that family separation was required in their particular case.

The separation has also severely restricted their communication, Tahmasebi said, with she and her son allowed to speak with Hashemi for about 10 minutes every two weeks under supervision.

She said the prolonged detention has taken a heavy toll on the family's physical and mental health.

Her son, who has lived in California for 12 years and attended the state's school system since pre-kindergarten, has struggled to understand why he is being detained in the country he considers home, Tahmasebi said.

The family eventually asked to be allowed to leave the United States voluntarily, according to Tahmasebi. She said the government opposed the request and indicated it could appeal judicial decisions allowing them to depart.

She said the family remains unable to understand why they are being detained and described their ordeal as an indefinite and punitive process.

“We are two working-class educators who had been living a working-class life in a rented apartment, and had never imagined anything like this happening to us,” Tahmasebi wrote.

She appealed for public support to secure the family's release, saying she wants her son to return to a normal life outside detention.

“If this could happen to us, a law-abiding family of two professors and a young boy, it can happen to anyone,” she wrote.

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