As of January 2024, there were nearly 13 million lawful permanent residents, or LPRs, living in the United States. And as the name suggests, LPRs—sometimes colloquially referred to as green card holders—are legally authorized to live and work in the U.S. indefinitely. Federal law imposes restrictions on the government’s ability to remove LPRs from the country.
But on Wednesday, the Trump administration will appear before the Supreme Court and attempt to ease those restrictions. Oral argument in Blanche v. Lau will determine if border agents can rely on unproven criminal allegations against an LPR to jeopardize their ability to remain in the United States.
At the center of this case is Muk Choi Lau, a 69-year-old Hong Kong native who became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in September 2007. Since then, he’s lived in New York City with his wife and son, who are green card holders, too. But in May 2012, New Jersey police arrested Lau for trademark counterfeiting; charging documents allege that he possessed and intended to sell 2,860 pairs of knockoff Coogi shorts, valued at $282,240. While charges were pending, Lau briefly visited China, and returned to the U.S. in June.
Lau’s June 2012 arrival at JFK Airport in New York is where things start to get a little tricky. Federal law expressly provides that, in most circumstances, LPRs returning from travel abroad “shall not” be treated as “seeking admission” to the country for immigration law purposes. This is basically the law’s way of acknowledging that green card holders aren’t newcomers to this country; they’re just coming home. So, as a general rule, LPRs have the right to leave and return to the United States as they please.
There are exceptions, though: Most relevant here, LPRs can be treated as “seeking admission” if they have committed “a crime involving moral turpitude.” And a records check at the airport revealed Lau’s pending criminal charge.
As a reminder, at the time Lau arrived at the airport, Lau had not been convicted of anything. All immigration agents had in front of them were unproven allegations. Nevertheless, immigration agents decided the exception applied. Instead of “admitting” Lau into the country like one normally would for a lawful permanent resident, agents confiscated his green card and “paroled” him—allowing him to physically enter the U.S., but only temporarily, so that he could face prosecution.
In June 2013, Lau pleaded guilty to trademark counterfeiting in New Jersey state court and was sentenced to two years’ probation. And in March 2014, the government began removal proceedings against him—not on the grounds that he violated the terms of his green card, but on the grounds that he was “inadmissible” when he returned from China two years earlier. In effect, because Lau briefly left the country, the government is treating Lau as if he were never a lawful permanent resident at all.
Lau argued in immigration court that, if the government were going to try to remove him, it had to use its deportation authority, and not its authority to remove “inadmissible” noncitizens. This is a technical-sounding distinction with huge practical consequences, because deportability and inadmissibility have different legal standards. If customs agents had admitted Lau as an LPR, a counterfeiting conviction more than five years after he got his green card would probably not be enough in and of itself to legally empower the government to remove him. But if Lau were inadmissible, as the government suggests, he can be forcibly removed from the country at any time.
Immigration courts rejected Lau’s arguments and ordered his removal. According to those courts, it did not matter that immigration agents treated Lau as inadmissible before he was convicted of anything; his eventual conviction provided “clear and convincing evidence” that he committed a crime of moral turpitude, so he could be properly removed on inadmissibility grounds. Under the Trump administration’s theory—unsurprisingly endorsed by the government’s in-house immigration judges’ rulings—mere suspicion of past wrongdoing is sufficient to treat LPRs returning from travel abroad like strangers to the United States, and expose them to risks like getting locked up in immigration detention or thrown out of the country they call home.
Lau appealed, and in March 2025, a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously vacated the removal order. For the panel, Judge Richard Sullivan wrote that the government has the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that an LPR committed a crime at the time of reentry, and charging documents alone are not sufficient. “Critically,” he explained, the statute doesn’t say that an LPR can be treated as seeking admission when he has “been charged with a crime” or is “believed to have committed a crime.”
Rather, Sullivan said, “it permits such treatment only when an LPR ‘has committed’ a crime.” As a result, he concluded, the government does not have the authority to “treat LPRs as having committed unproven, charged crimes at the time of reentry by paroling them first and proving their guilt later.”
The Second Circuit acknowledged that this created a split with other federal appeals courts. In 2014, the Fifth Circuit ruled in Munoz v. Holder that the government could rely on subsequent convictions because the statute’s text turns on whether an LPR “has committed” a crime, and not “the timing of the determination.” And in the 2021 decision Vazquez Romero v. Garland, the Ninth Circuit deferred to an immigration court’s finding that subsequent convictions could satisfy the government’s burden of proof. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will confront this split.
Immigrants rights groups warn that Blanche v. Lau could have profound consequences for the millions of lawful permanent residents in the United States. In criminal trials, people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Ruling against Lau would flip that principle on its head, empowering the government to presume guilt—and use it to strip green card holders of their rights.
