If Terror Commander’s Niece Can Game Asylum, Who Can’t?

Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently revoked the legal permanent resident status of the niece of Qasem Soleimani — the late commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The case reminds us that mass immigration is riddled with loopholes.

Hamideh Soleimani Afshar came to the U.S. on a tourist visa in 2015, claimed asylum in 2019 and received a green card in 2021. While in the U.S., she promoted Iranian regime propaganda, celebrated attacks on American soldiers, and denounced the United States as the “Great Satan.”

When she applied for citizenship in 2025, she disclosed four separate trips back to Iran — the country she claimed was too dangerous to return to.

If a relative of one of the world’s most notorious terror commanders can successfully claim asylum, obtain a green card, and travel freely back to the country she claimed to be fleeing, imagine how many others are exploiting the same broken system — people without famous last names who will never attract scrutiny.

Economic migrants routinely game the asylum system to obtain a U.S. work permit while their fraudulent cases wind their way through an overwhelmed court system. There are currently 1.4 million pending affirmative asylum claims plus another 2.35 million cases in the backlog.

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