Supreme Court rules border agents can deny green card holders reentry into US if they are charged with crimes

In a 6-3 decision handed down on Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled that immigration officers may consider pending criminal charges when weighing whether or not to readmit green card holders into the United States. 

The case of Blanche v Lau centered around Chinese national Muk Choi Lau, who became a lawful permanent resident of the US in 2007. He was charged in New Jersey with trademark counterfeiting in May of 2012, and while awaiting trial, Lau temporarily left the US for China. He attempted to reenter the US in June of 2012, at which time the border officer paroled him into the US pending the resolution of the criminal case instead of admitting him into the US. This distinction is key in this case.

"Lawful permanent residents generally must be regarded as already admitted to the country and usually do not have to reapply for admission when they return from temporary overseas travel," the Supreme Court explained. "Under an exception, the Government may regard a lawful permanent resident as 'seeking an admission' (and thus as not already admitted) if he 'has committed an offense identified in section 1182(a)(2),'" including a "crime involving moral turpitude."

Lau pleaded guilty in June of 2013, after which the government initiated removal proceedings. "At those proceedings, the Government charged Lau as an applicant for admission who was inadmissible for having been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude. Lau argued that he was a lawful permanent resident already admitted and subject to removal only on deportability grounds." An immigration judge ultimately found Lau removable as charged. 

An appeals court vacated the removal order, saying that the government needed "clear and convincing evidence" at the border that Lau had committed the crime, and that it was "not enough that the lawful permanent resident committed a crime involving moral turpitude," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court.

"The Government correctly regarded Lau as an applicant for admission, so it properly charged him with inadmissibility. Nothing in the INA required the border officer to have clear and convincing evidence that Lau had committed a crime involving moral turpitude before deeming him an applicant for admission," Thomas wrote. 

"We decline to read into the INA an additional clear-and-convincing-evidence burden on border officers entrusted with making ‘quick judgments on the spot’ when that burden is nowhere in the statute," he wrote. 

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson argued in a dissent from the court’s three liberal justices that the ruling gives the federal government a "blank check" to return lawful permanent residents to a status of "seeking an admission" upon entry at the border, "so long as the Government is able to show later that he was eventually convicted. That sequencing undermines the plain terms and basic operation of the relevant statutory scheme, which guarantees that LPRs will not be 'regarded as seeking an admission' at the border unless certain exceptions apply."

The court did not rule on whether Lau’s counterfeiting conviction qualified as a crime involving moral turpitude, and handed that portion of the case back down for further review.