Supreme Court Rules Border Officers Can Strip Green Card Status Based on Pending Charges, Raising Alarm for Seattle’s Immigrant Communities
Favour Bitrus
June 23, 2026
Picture Credit: Tim Mossholder
The United States Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a significant immigration enforcement victory on Tuesday, ruling 6-3 that border officers can revoke the permanent resident status of green card holders returning from international travel based solely on pending, unproven criminal charges, a decision that immigration attorneys say carries serious implications for the roughly 13 million lawful permanent residents across the country, including tens of thousands in the Seattle region.
The ruling in Blanche v. Lau, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, held that the Immigration and Nationality Act does not require border officials to possess clear and convincing evidence that a lawful permanent resident has committed a disqualifying crime before stripping them of their permanent status upon re-entry. Under the decision, border officers need only show reason to believe a returning green card holder may have committed a crime involving what immigration law calls moral turpitude in order to reclassify them as an applicant for admission rather than as a returning resident, a status shift that carries dramatically fewer legal protections and opens the door to expedited removal proceedings.
The case centered on Muk Choi Lau, a Chinese national who became a US permanent resident in 2007. In 2012, while facing an unresolved state charge for selling approximately $300,000 in counterfeit merchandise, Lau briefly traveled to China. Upon returning, a border officer discovered the pending charge in a federal database and paroled him into the country under temporary status rather than admitting him as a permanent resident. After Lau later pleaded guilty to the counterfeiting charge and received only probation, the Department of Homeland Security used the parole status to initiate removal proceedings that would not have been available had he been admitted normally on his green card. He has spent more than a decade in legal limbo, his permanent resident card confiscated at the border and replaced with a handwritten piece of paper.
The majority rejected the argument that border officers must wait for a conviction or confession before reclassifying a returning resident. “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. The case was sent back to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to determine whether Lau’s specific offense qualifies as a crime of moral turpitude under immigration law.
The Department of Homeland Security’s general counsel James Percival called the ruling “a big win” and said it affirmed an important tool the agency has long used to prevent criminals from entering the country.
The dissent was sharp. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, warned the majority had handed the executive branch a tool that could be weaponised against millions of legal residents. “I worry that the Court has now handed the Government a massive blank check,” Jackson wrote. “With today’s decision, the Court allows the Government to return a lawful permanent resident to the status of ‘seeking an admission’ upon his entry at the border, so long as the Government is able to show suspicion of a crime.” Jackson warned that an administration hostile to immigration could systematically use international travel to downgrade the legal status of green card holders it wants to remove, converting permanent residents into effectively stateless arriving aliens without judicial review, over charges that may ultimately be dropped or dismissed.
For Seattle, a city with one of the largest and most diverse immigrant populations in the Pacific Northwest, the ruling lands with particular weight. Washington was among the coalition of states that has challenged the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies in court, and immigration attorneys in the region were already urging green card holders to seek legal counsel before making any international travel plans following the decision. The ruling is especially consequential for those with any pending legal matter, past arrests, or old criminal records, even cases that appeared to be fully resolved.
Immigration lawyers are advising any green card holder with a pending charge, a prior arrest, or any unresolved legal matter to consult an attorney before traveling outside the United States.
