The US Supreme Court governed On Tuesday, the Immigration Service said immigration officials are not required to provide clear and convincing evidence that a returning lawful permanent resident has committed a crime involving moral turpitude before treating the resident as an applicant for entry rather than someone already admitted to the United States.
The 6:3 decision White c. Lau cleared a judgment from 2025 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and dismissed 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) must generally be treated as already admitted and are not required to reapply for admission upon returning from a temporary trip abroad. The government may instead consider an LPR “I’m looking for approval” if the resident has “committed” certain crimes, including a felony moral depravity. An LPR charged as an admission applicant bears the burden of proving admissibility, while the government must prove the deportability of an already admitted resident.
The case involved 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 attempted to re-enter at John F. Kennedy International Airport, a border official refused to treat him as already admitted and released him into the country on probation pending resolution of the charges. Lau pleaded guilty in 2013, and the government later began deportation proceedings, charging him inadmissibly with a crime of moral turpitude. An immigration judge found him deportable, and the Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed that.
The second circuit cleared the removal order, which states that border officials must treat returning LPRs as already admitted unless they have clear and convincing evidence that the resident has committed the disqualifying crime. The Supreme Court rejected this reasoning, finding that there was no such requirement in the text of the INA. The court explained that revoking an LPR on grounds of inadmissibility involves two steps: the commission of the offense is sufficient to treat the resident as an admission seeker, while a conviction or admission is necessary to establish inadmissibility. Thomas wrote that the government met its burden at Lau’s deportation hearing, where his admission of guilt served as clear and convincing evidence that he committed the crime before attempting to re-enter. The court declined to impose an additional burden of proof on officers who make “snap judgments on the spot.” It has not been decided whether Lau’s offense qualifies as a crime of moral turpitude, leaving that question to the remanded Second Circuit.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson contradictedalong with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. She argued that the law’s provision that an LPR “shall not be considered an application for entry” unless an exception applies requires the government to make that decision at the border and not later justify it on post-obtained evidence, such as a subsequent conviction. Jackson warned that the ruling handed the government a “massive blank check” and detailed the consequences of the “admission seeking” designation, including possible incarceration or probation, confiscation of a permanent green card, and a shifting of the burden of proof to the resident in inadmissibility proceedings.
