The US Supreme Court has ruled that federal border officials can more easily deport certain Green Card holders. In the ruling, the court said that officials do not need to prove by “clear and convincing evidence” that a lawful permanent resident, or Green Card holder, committed a crime involving “moral turpitude” before treating them as an applicant seeking readmission to the country. The 6-3 decision makes it easier for border officials to initiate removal proceedings against Green Card holders returning from trips abroad under certain circumstances. In the “Blanche v. Lau” case, the court held that the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) does not require border officers to meet the higher evidentiary standard before determining that a returning lawful permanent resident may be treated as someone seeking admission rather than someone already admitted to the United States.
US Supreme Court says INA does not require higher burden of proof
Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said, “The Immigration and Nationality Act does not impose that requirement.”The ruling stems from the case of Muk Choi Lau, a Chinese citizen and US Green Card holder who was stopped at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in 2012 while returning from a trip to China. At the time, Lau faced trademark counterfeiting charges in New Jersey. Border officials paroled him into the country instead of formally admitting him, and after he later pleaded guilty, the government initiated removal proceedings against him. The Supreme Court concluded that border officers were not required to have “clear and convincing evidence” of the alleged crime before treating Lau as an applicant for admission. It ruled that the government could regard a lawful permanent resident as seeking admission if there was reason to believe the person had committed a qualifying offense, with the conviction later serving as evidence during removal proceedings. The court did not decide whether Lau’s offense qualified as a crime involving moral turpitude and sent that question back to the lower court. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented, arguing that the government should first establish that a Green Card holder had committed a qualifying crime before changing their immigration status at the border.“I worry that the court has now handed the government a massive blank check. With today’s the decision, the Court allows the government to return an LPR to the status of ‘seeking admission’ upon his 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 law,” Jackson wrote in the ruling.
