Supreme Court Ruling Brings New Challenges for Green Card Holders, Advocates Warn

The case centered on Muk Choi Lau, a longtime green card holder who briefly traveled to China while facing a New Jersey charge for selling counterfeit goods. When he returned, a border officer placed him on parole based on that pending charge.

As Lau hadn’t been convicted yet on these charges, Wiese said that the border patrol officers are unqualified to make these decisions.

“Border officials are not lawyers. Border officials are oftentimes not deeply steeped in immigration law, and they get it wrong,” Wiese said. “Giving them more power and less of a requirement that they have any level of proof really increases the risk of lawful permanent residents being wrongfully detained.”

Maddie Boyd, a staff attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, said the ruling does not affect every green card holder — rather, those with criminal charges or past offenses that could qualify as what the law vaguely calls a “crime involving moral turpitude.” She urged anyone with a pending case or criminal history to consult a lawyer before traveling.

Boyd said the deeper problem is that the ruling allows the government to supply evidence of a crime after the fact, rather than at the border. “It erodes the presumption of innocence,” she said.

The stakes are especially high in California, where roughly three million green card holders reside. Mariam Arif, director of communications and development at SIREN in San José, said the timing is especially painful for South Bay families.

“A lot of the immigrant families or community, we often travel to our home countries to visit family, to attend a loved one’s funeral or just simply to reunite with our loved ones,” Arif said.

Arif said the ruling compounds fears that already run high amid increased immigration enforcement and proposed detention sites in the region.

For Wiese, the green card case cannot be understood in isolation. She pointed to the birthright citizenship case still pending before the Court and ongoing DACA renewal delays as pieces of the same picture.

“These cases are kind of tied together, and they really are part of this broader project of this administration to define who belongs and who doesn’t belong,” Wiese said. “This isn’t just a case about green card holders at the border. This is a case about due process rights.”

Advocates urged any green card holder with a criminal record, regardless of how dated or seemingly minor, to seek legal advice before leaving the country.