The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that green card holders suspected of crimes aren’t immune from scrutiny or guaranteed reentry into the country.
In fact, the justices determined they aren’t automatically guaranteed to be treated as a permanent resident when returning from overseas travel, especially if they are accused of a crime that can lead to their removal under federal immigration law.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court split along ideological lines in Blance v. Lau.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion, reversing a lower court ruling on the matter. The Court sided in favor of immigration authorities in denying or delaying entry to green-card holders who have been charged with certain crimes but have not yet been convicted.
The case actually stems from Obama’s immigration authorities, who held up a green-card for Chinese national Muk Choi Lau when he tried to re-enter the country.
But the Supreme Court decision is an immigration win for the embattled Trump administration, which has been flooded with legal challenges and thwarted by activist judges over its immigration policies.
Ultimately, the decision will make it easier to exclude criminal foreigners from entering the U.S.
“Indeed, making the border functionally unworkable is the de facto end goal of many of the legal arguments of progressives,” Dan McLaughlin wrote in commentary for National Review. “In this case, the Obama immigration authorities stood up for the letter of the law when they insisted that Lau was a criminal who could be excluded from the country, but undermined it in practice by paroling him into the country to await trial.”
The Supreme Court ruled that immigration officials can treat green card holders accused of certain crimes as applicants for admission when they return from foreign travel, even before securing a conviction.
The case centers on Muk Choi Lau, a Chinese citizen who became a lawful permanent resident in 2007. In 2012, New Jersey charged Lau with trademark counterfeiting.
While awaiting trial, Lau traveled to China and later attempted to return to the United States through John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Federal customs officials opted not to treat Lau as a returning permanent resident and instead classified him as an applicant seeking admission into the country.
The justices focused on whether a green card holder charged with a serious crime can be considered an “applicant for admission” rather than a returning permanent resident when returning to the U.S. from foreign travel.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Lau, arguing that immigration officials lacked sufficient evidence at the airport to treat him as an applicant for admission.
The defense argued that immigration officials needed “clear and convincing evidence” that a green-card holder committed a qualifying crime to treat such a person as only an applicant.
The conservative justices rejected that standard, which is not found in the law.
“Nothing in the INA [Immigration and Nationality Act] required the border officer to have clear and convincing evidence” before making that determination, Thomas wrote.
Thomas added that Congress never required border officers possess “clear and convincing evidence” before questioning a green card holder’s re-entry.
“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,” Thomas wrote.
McLaughlin noted the decision touches on a much larger issue: how hard the law makes it to remove criminal foreign nationals and illegal immigrants from the country.
“Lau himself, a Chinese national, is not a very sympathetic case for this, given that he unquestionably was guilty: He ultimately pleaded guilty to trademark counterfeiting [in 2013] after Obama-era immigration officials let him back into the country to have his day in court. Fourteen years later, he’s still here,” McLaughlin wrote.
However, the Court did not address whether Lau’s trademark-counterfeiting conviction qualifies as a crime involving “moral turpitude” under immigration law. The justices sent the case back to the lower court to resolve that dispute.
