The U.S. Supreme Court on April 22 grappled with whether immigration authorities may take steps to deport a Chinese citizen with a U.S. green card who had been charged with counterfeiting.

The legal issue in the highly technical case of Blanche v. Lau is whether the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) correctly classified the man as inadmissible because of a pending criminal charge. A lawful permanent resident of the United States since September 2007, the respondent, Muk Choi Lau, returned to the country in June 2012 after a trip to his native China.

The government-issued residency document issued to lawful permanent residents is colloquially called a green card.

Lau had been charged in May 2012 with violating New Jersey law by engaging in third-degree trademark counterfeiting.

Upon returning to the United States, he presented himself as a lawful permanent resident, but U.S. immigration authorities noted the pending charge and declined to formally admit him to the country. Instead, they granted him parole with deferred inspection, meaning he was allowed into the country subject to a later decision on his immigration status.

Lau was convicted of counterfeiting in June 2013 and sentenced to two years of probation. In March 2014, DHS moved to deport him, saying that he had been ineligible for admission in June 2012 because when he reentered the country he had committed “a crime involving moral turpitude.”

The Department of Justice claimed that an offense involving moral turpitude is a serious crime sufficient to support a deportation.

Lau argued immigration authorities should have admitted him as a green card holder, instead of treating him as a foreigner seeking admission, and that the then-pending and unproven charge was not “clear and convincing” evidence of moral turpitude. He also argued that counterfeiting qualified under the “petty offense” exception in Section 1182 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

In April 2016, Lau asked the U.S. attorney general to waive his inadmissibility. The INA states that to be eligible for the waiver, an alien has to have “lawfully resided continuously in the United States for a period of not less than [seven] years immediately preceding the date of initiation of proceedings to remove the alien.”

Lau admitted he had been a lawful permanent resident for about six years and seven months when the deportation proceeding was initiated, but argued that the time he was in the country before getting the green card should count toward the seven-year period.

Immigration Judge Ruling

In March 2018, an immigration judge found that the conviction counted as a crime of moral turpitude and did not fall under the petty offense exception because the maximum possible sentence for counterfeiting exceeded one year of incarceration. The judge held that even though Lau had not been convicted at the time of reentry, he had nonetheless committed the crime, making him inadmissible. The judge also found that he was not eligible for a waiver of inadmissibility because he had not resided continuously in the country for seven years before the removal proceeding was initiated.

In November 2021, the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed Lau’s appeal and upheld the judge’s order; however, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed in March 2025.

The appeals court found that the existence of a pending criminal charge does not provide the clear and convincing evidence of a crime of moral turpitude needed for DHS to deem a person a readmission applicant subject to parole into the country.

At oral argument on April 22, Justice Department attorney Sopan Joshi told the Supreme Court that because Lau had already committed a crime of moral turpitude when he reentered the country, DHS correctly deemed him inadmissible and eligible for parole.

Lau’s argument that immigration officers at the airport did not at that time possess clear and convincing evidence of moral turpitude “makes no sense,” Joshi said.

“Burdens of proof and evidentiary burdens are things that apply in adversarial proceedings before a decision maker, not at the airport, where non-lawyer immigration officers are processing hundreds, maybe thousands, of arrivals a day.”

Lau’s attorney, Shay Dvoretzky, said the text and structure of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as well as historical practice, “make clear that an officer must decide at the border whether [a lawful permanent resident] is seeking admission.”

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito presented a hypothetical example in which someone entering the country was suspected of committing a murder in France. They asked if the person could be put into deportation proceedings.

Dvoretzky said in that scenario “the charge doesn’t show that he’s committed the offense.”

Roberts said it seemed “pretty bizarre to say that in that situation they couldn’t even be detained.”

The attorney said maybe the person could be detained, but the issue had not been “fleshed out” in the court’s briefing process.

Joshi, speaking for the government, said when a prosecutor files charges or seeks indictments, that means the prosecutor “believes I think you did it and I think I’m going to be able to prove to a jury that you did it.”

The border officer is “making exactly those same conclusions,” he said.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor told Joshi the problem she was having with the government’s argument is that lawful permanent residents “have a legal right to be here. They have a legal right to come back into the country.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told Joshi she was concerned that in the future the government could “inappropriately parole people rather than admit them so that it depresses immigration.”

She said when a green card holder leaves the country, the government could, “based on a suspicion or even an indictment that’s in the government’s control, they flag this person as … returning under parole as opposed to lawful admission.”

After Dvoretzky echoed Jackson’s concerns, Alito asked the lawyer if his argument depends “on acceptance of this conspiracy theory.”

Dvoretzky said it was his view that if the government prevails it could “lead to a situation where, again, [lawful permanent residents] are paroled just based on a mere suspicion.”

The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling on the case by the end of June.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared April 22, 2026, in The Epoch Times.

Photo: Official Photograph of Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson taken by Supreme Court Photographer Fred Schilling, 2022.