Blanche v. Lau

Case background

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the Government can remove aliens applying for admission to the country if they are “inadmissible,” and it can remove aliens already admitted if they are “deportable.” Respondent Muk Choi Lau, a Chinese citizen, was admitted to the United States as a lawful permanent resident in 2007. On May 7, 2012, New Jersey charged Lau with trademark counterfeiting, and while awaiting trial he temporarily left the United States for China. Lawful permanent residents generally must be regarded as already admitted and need not reapply for admission when they return from temporary travel, but under an exception the Government may regard such a resident as “seeking an admission” if he “has committed an offense identified in section 1182(a)(2),” including a crime involving moral turpitude. Because of Lau’s pending charge, when he tried to reenter on June 15, 2012, the border officer declined to treat him as already admitted and instead paroled him into the country pending his criminal case. After Lau pleaded guilty in 2013, the Government charged him as an applicant for admission who was inadmissible for having been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude. The Immigration Judge found him removable and the Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed, but the Second Circuit vacated the removal order, holding that Lau should have been regarded as already admitted unless the border officer had “clear and convincing” evidence that he had committed the crime. Because that decision conflicted with rulings of the Fifth and Ninth Circuits, the Court granted certiorari.

Questions Presented

(1) Whether, to remove a lawful permanent resident (LPR) who committed an offense listed in Section 1182(a)(2) and was subsequently paroled into the United States, the government must prove that it possessed clear and convincing evidence of the offense at the time of the LPR’s last reentry into the United States.

Holding

The Immigration and Nationality Act does not require a border officer to have clear and convincing evidence that a lawful permanent resident has committed a crime involving moral turpitude before deeming the resident an applicant for admission. Removing a lawful permanent resident on a charge of inadmissibility involves two steps: at step one, only commission of the crime is required to regard the alien as seeking admission; at step two, a conviction or admission is required to show that the alien is inadmissible. Lau was correctly charged, because he had committed a crime involving moral turpitude before reentry and was later convicted of it. Nothing in the statute imposes a clear-and- convincing-evidence burden on the Government at the border; the Board of Immigration Appeals imposes that burden only at the removal hearing, where the Government satisfied it through Lau’s guilty plea. The Court does not decide whether Lau’s crime was one involving moral turpitude and remands for further proceedings.

The Court

Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett joined. Justice Jackson filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Sotomayor and Kagan joined.

What this episode contains

This episode is an AI-narrated reading of the majority opinion in Blanche v. Lau, written by Justice Thomas.

AI disclosure: The voice in this episode is AI-generated, using a machine learning model styled to loosely resemble the authoring justice. Tone, inflection, pacing, and emphasis are artifacts of the model and should not be attributed to Justice Thomas. The text being read is the Court’s published majority opinion, lightly adapted to improve readability for the spoken format.