United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio has revoked the lawful permanent resident status of Eissa Hashemi, son of former Iranian Vice President for Women and Family Affairs Masoumeh Ebtekar, along with Hashemi's wife Maryam Tahmasebi and their son. Rubio stated that the family was granted visas in 2014 under the Obama administration and received permanent residency in June 2016 through the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program. He declared they "should never have been allowed to benefit from the extraordinary privilege of living in our country." The individuals are now in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) pending deportation.
Rubio linked Ebtekar to the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, identifying her as the spokeswoman for the militants who seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. He referred to her by the nickname "Screaming Mary," alleging she participated in broadcasting messages from the captors while hostages were subjected to beatings, starvation, and mock executions. In a post on X, Rubio emphasized that under the Trump administration, the U.S. would not offer refuge to "anti-American terrorists or their families." He framed the revocation as a corrective action against a decision made during the previous administration.
Marco Rubio's move to deport the family of Masoumeh Ebtekar is less about immigration enforcement and more about symbolic retribution, weaponizing residency status against the relatives of a figure tied to a historic anti-American act. By naming Ebtekar as "Screaming Mary," Rubio resurrects a decades-old trauma to justify a present-day administrative reversal, turning a family's legal residency into political collateral.
The action exposes how immigration policy in the U.S. can shift dramatically with changes in administration, especially when tied to emotionally charged narratives. The fact that the family entered legally under the Diversity Visa Program and gained permanent status in 2016 shows their presence was once deemed acceptable by U.S. authorities. Now, their fate hinges on a re-evaluation of their relative's past, not their own conduct.
For ordinary Nigerians who rely on visa programs like the Diversity Lottery, this case underscores the fragility of such opportunities when geopolitical sentiment overrides procedural consistency. It signals that approval today may be revoked tomorrow based on associations, not actions.
This fits a broader pattern of using immigration as a tool of political messaging, where symbolic gestures often outweigh policy coherence.
