Saagar Enjeti

which was undercut, they say, by the fact that they had visited Iran in subsequent years.

So friends of the family and the family themselves say that they had indeed been forced to leave Iran under duress, and it happened after Serena had taken part in a public dance performance in 2012 when she was about 12 years old.

What happened is that she was in Turkey on vacation, and she competed in this dance competition for the satellite channel TV Persia.

It's illegal to watch TV Persia in Iran, but people can get it anyway.

And it's the kind of soft cultural influence that the U.S.

government funds.

I don't know if they funded TV Persia at the time, but either way, when it aired back in Iran, it went viral and not in a good way.

All hell came down on her and her mom.

She was expelled from her public school.

Then not long after that,

expelled from her next school, a private school, when the scandal resurfaced.

Her mother was attacked on occasion, and they continued getting death threats.

So here's one of the performances that went viral and aired on TV Persia.

So under continuous pressure, they came to the U.S.

when she was 14 and filed for asylum.

They won, and they have since become legal permanent residents.

Now, Rubio's argument that the women don't deserve asylum is odd because one of the top U.S.

complaints about the Iranian government is that they don't respect women's rights.

Now, in general, a grant of asylum is called into question if the asylum seeker travels back to the country where they claimed they feel unsafe.

And that honestly makes sense in general.