Supreme Court Weighs Whether Green Card Holders Can Face Removal for Crimes

(JFK AIRPORT) — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear Blanche v. Lau during the 2025-2026 term, taking up whether the Department of Homeland Security can treat returning lawful permanent residents as applicants for admission based on pending criminal charges alone.

The case reaches the court with a decision expected by early July 2026. At issue is whether that classification can open the door to removal proceedings when a green card holder returns to the United States before any conviction exists.

The dispute turns on Jing Wong Lau, a Chinese national and lawful permanent resident, who sought re-entry at JFK in June 2012 after travel abroad while he faced pending federal trademark counterfeiting charges. DHS paroled him in as an applicant for admission rather than admitting him as a returning lawful permanent resident.

That choice shaped everything that followed. Federal authorities later placed Lau in removal proceedings after a later conviction for a crime involving moral turpitude, often called a CIMT.

The Immigration and Nationality Act lets the government treat lawful permanent residents as applicants for admission in limited circumstances. One of those conditions requires clear and convincing evidence that the person committed a CIMT.

In July 2024, the Second Circuit ruled that Lau’s pending charge at the time of his return did not satisfy that standard. The court vacated his removal order, finding that a pending criminal charge alone did not supply the proof the statute required at the border.

That ruling set up a conflict with a 2012 Board of Immigration Appeals decision and with rulings from other federal circuits. Those decisions permit later convictions to retroactively justify classifying a returning green card holder as an applicant for admission.

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, arguing for the government in the merits brief, took a broader position on the power of immigration officers at ports of entry. He argued that courts lack jurisdiction under the Immigration and Nationality Act to review discretionary parole decisions made there.

Sauer also argued that DHS does not need to establish the crime at the initial border encounter. Under that view, the government needs to produce evidence of the crime during the later removal proceedings, not when the lawful permanent resident first arrives.

The legal question carries weight beyond Lau’s case because it reaches a recurring border issue for green card holders who travel while criminal matters remain unresolved. If the government prevails, a returning lawful permanent resident with any pending charge could be paroled in, placed in removal proceedings, and then face deportation if the charge later leads to a CIMT finding.

Experts described that possibility as a deportation shortcut. The concern, as framed in the case, is that pending charges alone could strip returning lawful permanent residents of the travel protections that usually attach to their status and expose thousands to removal proceedings before a conviction exists.

Lau’s own case also shows that a win for him would not erase every immigration consequence tied to a criminal conviction. The Second Circuit explicitly allowed DHS to pursue a new removal case under INA Section 237(a)(2)(A)(i) based on his CIMT conviction within five years of admission, even as it terminated the original proceeding because of the misclassification at re-entry.

That procedural posture matters because the Supreme Court is not deciding whether criminal convictions can trigger deportation under the immigration laws. The justices instead will focus on the point of entry, asking whether DHS can place a returning lawful permanent resident into the applicant-for-admission category at the outset when only a pending charge exists.

The answer affects how border inspections and later immigration court cases fit together. One path requires immigration officers to satisfy the statutory threshold when the green card holder arrives; the other allows the government to make the classification first and support it later during removal proceedings.

The dispute also sits within a larger body of immigration law that already makes some convictions especially severe for lawful permanent residents. Green card holders convicted of aggravated felonies remain deportable under INA Sections 212(a)(2) and 237(a)(2).

Examples include murder, drug trafficking, or theft with one-year sentences. Those convictions carry separate consequences regardless of what the Supreme Court does in Blanche v. Lau.

Cancellation of removal, one of the main forms of relief for some lawful permanent residents, has strict limits as well. To qualify, a person must have five years as a lawful permanent resident, seven years of continuous residence, subject to the stop-time rule, and no aggravated felony conviction.

That framework narrows the reach of the case in one sense and widens it in another. The case does not alter the rule that aggravated felonies can make green card holders deportable, but it could determine how many returning lawful permanent residents enter the removal system in the first place.

The Second Circuit’s ruling gave DHS a split result. It rejected the original theory used at the border, but it preserved a route for the government to pursue removal on a different statutory ground tied to Lau’s later conviction.

Judge Sullivan’s decision did not leave the agency without options. It said the original proceeding could not stand because DHS had misclassified Lau when he re-entered, yet it allowed a fresh case under the provision covering certain CIMT convictions within five years of admission.

The government’s position asks the Supreme Court to accept a more flexible reading of what immigration officers can do at the border. The Second Circuit’s position reads the statutory limits more tightly and insists that DHS meet the proof requirement at the moment it chooses to treat a returning lawful permanent resident as an applicant for admission.

That disagreement reflects two competing views of the same statute. One treats the initial parole decision as largely insulated from judicial review; the other examines whether the government had the legal basis to put a green card holder on that track at all.

The calendar in the case is straightforward. Lau sought re-entry at JFK in June 2012, the Second Circuit ruled in July 2024, and the Supreme Court will hear the dispute in the 2025-2026 term with a decision expected by early July 2026.

By then, the justices will have answered a question with immediate consequences for green card holders who travel while criminal charges remain pending. A ruling for the government would let DHS rely on that pending-charge status at the border and sort out the proof later in removal proceedings; a ruling for Lau would keep the statutory limits in place at the moment of re-entry.

The case arrives at the Supreme Court from an airport encounter that lasted a moment but carried years of consequences. The court’s ruling will decide whether that moment gives DHS power to recast returning green card holders as applicants for admission before the law’s required proof exists.