The US Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that immigration officers are not required to have clear and convincing evidence that a returning lawful permanent resident committed a crime involving moral turpitude before treating the resident as an applicant for admission rather than as someone already admitted to the United States.
The 6-3 decision in Blanche v. Lau vacated a 2025 ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and remanded the case. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), lawful permanent residents (LPRs) generally must be treated as already admitted and need not reapply for admission when returning from temporary travel abroad. The government may instead regard an LPR as “seeking an admission” if the resident “has committed” certain offenses, including a crime involving moral turpitude. An LPR charged as an applicant for admission bears the burden of proving admissibility, while the government must prove deportability for a resident deemed already admitted.
The case concerned Muk Choi Lau, a Chinese citizen who became an LPR in 2007. New Jersey charged Lau with trademark counterfeiting in 2012. After he briefly traveled to China and sought to reenter at John F. Kennedy International Airport, a border officer declined to treat him as already admitted and paroled him into the country pending resolution of the charge. Lau pleaded guilty in 2013, and the government later initiated removal proceedings, charging him as inadmissible for a crime involving moral turpitude. An immigration judge found him removable, and the Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed.
The Second Circuit vacated the removal order, holding that border officers must treat returning LPRs as already admitted unless they have clear and convincing evidence the resident committed the disqualifying crime. The Supreme Court rejected that reasoning, finding no such requirement in the INA’s text. The court explained that removing an LPR on inadmissibility grounds involves two steps: commission of the crime is enough to treat the resident as seeking admission, while conviction or admission is required to establish inadmissibility. Thomas wrote that the government satisfied its burden at Lau’s removal hearing, where his guilty plea served as clear and convincing evidence that he had committed the crime before attempting to reenter. The court declined to impose an added evidentiary burden on officers making “quick judgments on the spot.” It did not decide whether Lau’s offense qualifies as a crime involving moral turpitude, leaving that question for the Second Circuit on remand.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. She argued that the statute’s directive that an LPR “shall not be regarded as seeking an admission” unless an exception applies requires the government to make that determination at the border, not to justify it later with after-acquired evidence such as a subsequent conviction. Jackson warned that the ruling hands the government “a massive blank check” and detailed the consequences of the “seeking an admission” classification, including possible detention or parole, confiscation of a permanent green card, and a shift of the burden of proof onto the resident in inadmissibility proceedings.
