The Trump administration again plans to terminate the legal status of hundreds of thousands of migrants, after a judge blocked its initial effort to revoke permissions to live in the United States granted under Democratic President Joe Biden.
The administration detailed its intention in filings in federal court in Boston, where a judge had ruled in March that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security acted unlawfully when it ended the legal status of more than 900,000 people who were allowed to live in the country after using the Biden-era app CBP One.
That judge, Allison Burroughs, on Friday scheduled a May 6 hearing to consider barring DHS from following through on its plans.
DHS did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
Under Biden, immigrants had been generally granted two-year terms of humanitarian parole after using CBP One, an app that allowed them to schedule an appointment with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
After Republican President Donald Trump returned to the White House, many non-citizens who received parole through the CBP One process received an email in April 2025 from DHS saying it was terminating their parole and it was "time for you to leave the United States."
Burroughs, who was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, last month concluded DHS needed to undo the parole terminations, saying DHS failed to provide a necessary record showing an official determined the purposes of parole had been served.
The U.S. Department of Justice this week told Burroughs that while the administration was complying with her order, it was also issuing new parole termination notices to those migrants pursuant to a Tuesday memo from CBP's head, Rodney Scott.
The memo is not public, but according to the Justice Department, Scott provided an explanation for why, in his opinion, "parole is no longer appropriate for those aliens."
Lawyers at the groups Democracy Forward and Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, representing migrants challenging DHS' actions, in a Thursday filing urged Burroughs to intervene and prevent what they called a "deliberate attempt to evade compliance with the court's order."
TheU.S. military's 55-day warwith Iran has alarmingly drawn down several categories of high-end air-delivered munitions, forcing the Department of War to draw from critical stockpiles in Asia and Europe. The drawdown of these weapons only suggests a possible readiness problem and helps explain why President Trump's war economy is set to accelerate, with expected increases in munitions production.
The New York Times has released a report that says since the US-Iran conflict began in late February, the US military has burned through roughly 1,100 JASSM-ER long-range stealth cruise missiles, more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, over 1,200 Patriot interceptors, and more than 1,000 Precision Strike and ATACMS missiles.
"The Iran war has significantly drained much of the U.S. military's global supply of munitions, and forced the Pentagon to rush bombs, missiles and other hardware to the Middle East from commands in Asia and Europe," the outlet said, citing internal Defense Department estimates and congressional officials.
The report continued, "The drawdowns have left these regional commands less ready to confront potential adversaries like Russia and China, and it has forced the United States to find ways to scale up production to address the depletions, Trump administration and congressional officials say."
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, stated earlier this week, "At current production rates, reconstituting what we have expended could take years."
One of the first major signals that the DoW was set to call on private industry to begin ramping up Trump's war economy was a report earlier this month that said the Trump administration was exploring whether U.S. manufacturers, including GM, Ford, GE Aerospace, and Oshkosh, could convert civilian industrial capacity into weapons production as multiple conflict areas across Eurasia drag on and deplete critical weapons stockpiles.
The historical precedent is that America converted its automotive base during World War II to produce record numbers of main battle tanks, bombers, and fighter planes to win the war.
"The United States has many munitions with adequate inventories, but some critical ground-attack and missile-defense munitions were short before the war and are even shorter now," Mark F. Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the outlet. He recently published a study estimating US weapons stockpiles.
Evidence of converting underused civilian industrial capacity has recently emerged, with the German automaker Volkswagen set to transform its Lower Saxony factory from producing T-Roc Cabriolets to manufacturing parts for the Iron Dome missile interceptor system.
The important signal we are gathering here is that the US may have to convert underutilized civilian industrial capacity, including truck and auto production lines, to weapons output.
To be frank, this is no longer peacetime procurement. It is wartime industrial mobilization, with Washington now being forced to confront the gap between the weapons it burns in the Middle East and the weapons its defense base can actually replace.
The European Union is willing to gradually ease sanctions on Iran if a comprehensive agreement is reached, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said.
“The easing of sanctions can be part of a process,” Merz said at an EU summit, adding it could help advance negotiations and support a lasting ceasefire.
Israel’s military said it targeted senior figures linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards intelligence unit over plots to harm Israeli citizens at home and abroad.
The military said the strikes, carried out with Israel’s domestic and foreign intelligence agencies, hit key operatives including Majid Khademi, identified as head of the unit, and Mohsen Souri, described as overseeing operations.
It added that in recent weeks an alleged Iran-directed plan involving allied militias in Iraq had been underway, including the use of foreign operatives and direct financing.
Israel said it continues to monitor related infrastructure and would act against it if necessary.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Pakistani counterpart Ishaq Dar discussed by phone on Friday bilateral cooperation and the situation in the Persian Gulf.
The real story behind Tehran’s sudden “unity” campaign did not begin with Donald Trump’s accusations of disarray within Iran’s leadership. It began with a secret letter to Mojtaba Khamenei.
In recent days, word has circulated in Iranian political circles about a highly confidential letter reportedly written by a group of senior officials to Mojtaba Khamenei.
According to those familiar with the matter, the letter warned that Iran’s economic situation is grave, that the country cannot continue on its current path, and that the leadership has no practical choice but to negotiate seriously with the United States over the nuclear file.
The historical echo is hard to miss. In the final days of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988, senior Iranian officials and commanders warned Ruhollah Khomeini that the war could no longer be sustained.
Only days earlier, Khomeini had still been insisting on continuing the war. But under the weight of those warnings, he accepted UN Security Council Resolution 598 and ended the conflict, a decision he famously likened to drinking from a poisoned chalice.
That is why the current letter matters: it suggests that some senior figures now see the nuclear standoff as another moment when ideological insistence is colliding with the limits of the state.
The reported signatories included senior figures such as Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Masoud Pezeshkian, Abbas Araghchi, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, and others. Some officials apparently refused to sign it. One name now circulating is Ali Bagheri Kani, Iran’s former chief nuclear negotiator under Ebrahim Raisi.
The letter was supposed to remain top secret. It was addressed to Mojtaba Khamenei, not to the public, Parliament, or the ordinary political class. But according to accounts now circulating, Bagheri Kani showed the letter to other hardliners outside the high-level circle and emphasized that he had not signed it. From there, the matter leaked into political circles in Tehran.
Two public reactions suggest how sensitive the leak has become. The first came from Jalil Mohebbi, a figure close to Ghalibaf and a former secretary of the headquarters for Enjoining the Good and Forbidding the Evil.
In a pointed legal warning, he wrote that if a confidential letter is given to a member of a meeting, and that person shows it to outsiders while saying, “I did not sign this letter,” then under Article 3 of the law on publishing and disclosing confidential and secret government documents, that person can face up to ten years in prison.
Mohebbi added: “This offense is unforgivable.”
اگر یک نامه سری به یکی از از اعضای جلسه ای رونوشت داده شود و آن شخص نامه را به دیگران (غیر از اعضای جلسه) نشان دهد و بگوید من این نامه را امضا نکرده ام مطابق ماده ۲ قانون مجازات انتشار و افشای اسناد محرمانه و سری دولتی به تا ده سال حبس محکوم میشود. این جرم غیرقابل گذشت است...
The second came from a Telegram channel that referred to an “important confidential letter” written by some senior officials and left unsigned by others.
The post asked why, at such a sensitive moment after the war, some officials had begun writing letters to “senior figures of the system,” and why others were so angry about its disclosure. In Iranian political language, that phrase is often used to refer to the Supreme Leader without naming him directly.
Trump’s claim meets Tehran’s denial
This was the atmosphere in which Trump’s claim landed. He said Iranian officials were “fighting like cats and dogs” because they could not agree about negotiations with the United States. Tehran immediately claimed otherwise. On Thursday, senior officials moved in near-unison to insist there was no split.
Ghalibaf, the speaker of parliament, wrote: “In Iran there are no hardliners or moderates. We are all Iranian and revolutionary.” He added that with the “iron unity of the nation and the state” and full obedience to the Supreme Leader, Iran would make the “criminal aggressor” regret its actions.
President Pezeshkian posted almost the same message: “In Iran, there are no ‘hardliners’ or ‘moderates.’ We are all Iranians and revolutionaries.” He too invoked unity between nation and state, obedience to the Leader, and victory for Iran.
Mohseni Ejei, the head of the Judiciary, went further. He said the “foolish president of America” should know that “hardliner” and “moderate” are absurd and baseless terms from Western political literature. In Islamic Iran, he said, all groups and factions ultimately stand united under the orders of the Supreme Leader.
Mojtaba’s red line
Before the first round of negotiations, Mojtaba Khamenei had reportedly drawn a red line: Iranian officials were not to discuss the nuclear issue with the United States. But the Iranian delegation had to talk about the nuclear file, because any serious negotiation with Washington necessarily revolves around it. So they did.
That decision triggered the hardline backlash.
Mahmoud Nabavian, deputy chairman of Parliament’s National Security Commission, was present in the Pakistan negotiations. He has since said that the outcome of those talks was not satisfactory and that the negotiating team made a “strategic mistake.” His accusation was specific: the team acted “contrary to the explicit red line of the Leader of the Revolution” by discussing the nuclear issue with America.
Nabavian also said the delegation should have discussed the ten points set out by the Supreme Leader, not the nuclear file. He criticized the idea that the “Resistance Front” could be reduced only to Lebanon, saying Gaza, Yemen, and Iraq are also part of it.
Most importantly, he said that based on new information he had received, from now on, “even if the naval blockade is lifted, any negotiation with America is forbidden.”
Amir Hossein Sabeti, a hardline MP, made the same charge more directly. “I am saying this for the first time, and I stand by what I say,” he said. “If what I say is false, the officials should take action against me.” He added that one of the Leader’s red lines was that “in the negotiations, the nuclear issue must absolutely not be discussed.”
Then he challenged Ghalibaf and Araghchi by name: if they did not negotiate over the nuclear issue, they should explicitly deny it. If it becomes clear that they did, he warned, “we will frankly speak out to the people of Iran in a different way.”
The backlash moves into the open
This helps explain why the Iranian delegation did not travel to Pakistan for the second round. The dispute was no longer merely about diplomatic tactics. It had become a fight over whether senior officials had crossed a red line set by Mojtaba Khamenei.
The backlash then moved into the media. Nour News, affiliated with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, published a video warning that a “dangerous current” was trying to portray Ghalibaf and Araghchi as figures who, instead of following the line of resistance, were seeking “surrender and compromise.” Nour News said this current was trying to place them against the Leader and other senior pillars of the system.
That formulation is revealing. Ghalibaf and Araghchi were not only answering Trump. They were under pressure from within the regime, where hardliners accused them of abandoning the resistance, pushing compromise, and trying to pressure the Leader.
The secret letter appears to be the center of this crisis. One camp believes Iran’s economic situation has become so severe that the country must negotiate over the nuclear issue and try to reach a deal. Another camp believes that even discussing the nuclear file with America violates Mojtaba Khamenei’s order and amounts to surrender.
From left to right: Masoud Pezeshkian, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, Ali Bagheri Kani
The unity tweets as damage control
That is why Thursday’s tweets sounded so coordinated. They were not just patriotic slogans. They were loyalty statements. Ghalibaf, Pezeshkian, Mohseni Ejei, and others were signaling that they stood with the Leader, not against him, and that the leaked letter should not be read as an act of rebellion.
So when Tehran says there is no division, the evidence points the other way.
There was a secret letter to the leader. Some officials signed it; others refused. The letter leaked. A figure close to Ghalibaf threatened legal consequences for the disclosure. Hardline MPs accused the negotiating team of violating the Leader’s red line. Nour News warned that Ghalibaf and Araghchi were being portrayed as men of “surrender and compromise.” Then, suddenly, senior officials issued synchronized tweets declaring unity and obedience.
Trump said Iranian officials were “fighting like cats and dogs” over negotiations with the United States. Tehran rejected the claim, but the sequence of events points to a real internal fight. The dispute is not cosmetic. It goes to the core of the regime’s strategy: whether Iran can survive its economic crisis without a nuclear deal, and whether pursuing such a deal now means defying Mojtaba Khamenei.
The unity tweets were not proof that Tehran is united. They were the public cover for a split that had already become visible.
The IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News reported on Friday that no negotiations with the United States are on Abbas Araghchi's agenda, and his trip to Islamabad is not for talks with Washington.
"He is engaging only with the Pakistani side on the Islamic Republic’s considerations regarding the end of the war," the report said, denying a report by CNN that said US negotiators are heading to Islamabad for talks with Araghchi.
