On April 4, the State Department announced that it had revoked lawful permanent resident status and detained two women it claimed were the niece and grandniece of deceased Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in an airstrike by the first Trump administration in January 2020. Far-right activist Laura Loomer quickly took credit for the women’s detention, claiming she “exposed them” and sent their information to Secretary of State Marco Rubio after her March 8 social media post calling for the deportation of Soleimani’s supposed niece. However, Drop Site News looked over multiple identifying documents of the two detainees and reported on April 22 that the “two Iranian women in ICE detention are not, in fact, related to Qasem Soleimani.”

Following the arrests, Fox News relentlessly touted the Trump administration’s detention of Soleimani’s alleged family members. In total, at least 14 Fox News shows ran at least 32 segments mentioning the supposed connection between the two women and Qassem Soleimani. The network aired claims linking the two women to Soleimani over 60 times, including at least 26 mentions on April 6 alone.

Anchor Harris Faulkner made the apparently false connection at least 6 times, tied with correspondent Gillian Turner with the most of anyone on Fox. In one segment from April 8, Faulkner claimed one of the women “was raised by terrorists,” adding, “You’ve got the niece and the grandniece living large. I mean, what did you think that these offspring of those killers would become?”

Despite having previously flooded its airwaves with the familial claim, as of 4 p.m. EST on April 24 Fox News has yet to retract or correct its reporting to note that the women are seemingly not actually related to Qassem Soleimani.

On April 5, Fox contributor Lisa Boothe claimed the supposed grandniece was “posing like a hooker” on social media and fearmongered about more people allegedly tied to terrorists entering the country through “our legal immigration system.” Guest Sheila Nazarian accused the women of being “wannabe Instagram influencers all on the blood money — money that was embezzled, stolen from the Iranian people,” and complained that many asylum-seekers from Iran and Somalia do not have “a real asylum claim.” Fox hosts Will Cain and Sean Hannity similarly accused the women of living “lavish” lifestyles in the United States, echoing language from the State Department’s April 4 press release.

Beyond Fox News, other right-wing outlets such as Newsmax and even major press outlets including Politico, CBS, and The Guardian echoed the Trump administration’s seemingly false claim that the women were relatives of Qassem Soleimani. Newsmax host Rob Schmitt called it “one of my favorite stories of the year.”

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original programming on Fox News Channel for any of the terms (including misspellings) “Hamideh,” “Soleimani,” “Afshar,” “Sarina,” “Hosseiny,” “Qassem,” or “Soleimani” within close proximity of either of the terms “niece” or “daughter” or any variations of either of the terms “grandniece” or “granddaughter” or any derivations of either of the the root terms “relate” or “family” from March 8, 2026, when right-wing activist Laura Loomer posted about the supposed niece of deceased Iranian military officer Qassem Soleimani living in the U.S., through 4 p.m. EST on April 24, 2026.

We included claims, which we defined as instances of uninterrupted blocks of speech from a single speaker that suggested Hamideh Soleimani Afshar or her daughter, Sarina Hosseiny, were related to the late Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani. For host monologues, headlines, and correspondent reports, we defined a claim as the speech between read quotes and played clips. We did not consider the speech within read quotes or played clips unless a speaker in the segment positively affirmed said speech either directly before or after the quote was read or the clip was played.