Trump admin sees two court victories for border enforcement agenda

The Trump administration saw two immigration enforcement victories June 23, as the Supreme Court ruled that green card holders can lose their admission status based on pending criminal charges and the D.C. Circuit cleared the way for nationwide expedited removal of noncitizens.

Green cards and criminal charges

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that border officers do not need clear and convincing evidence that lawful permanent residents committed a crime before stripping them of their already-admitted status and subjecting them to inadmissibility proceedings.

The case arose after New Jersey charged Muk Choi Lau, a Chinese citizen and lawful permanent resident since 2007, with trademark counterfeiting in 2012. While awaiting trial, Lau traveled to China. When he attempted to reenter the U.S., a border officer paroled him rather than admitting him, citing the pending charges. Later, after Lau pleaded guilty, the government initiated removal proceedings, charging him as an applicant for admission who was inadmissible for having been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude.

A circuit court split prompted the Supreme Court to take up the case.

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, held that the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) allows for border officers to make "quick judgments on the spot” in situations like Lau’s, with no burden to produce evidence of guilt.

The court said the process for removing a lawful permanent resident on inadmissibility grounds involves two steps: at step one, only criminal charges are needed to treat the resident as seeking admission; at step two, conviction or admission to a crime is required to establish inadmissibility. The court found Lau was correctly processed under both steps and that the government satisfied any evidentiary burden at the removal hearing through his guilty plea.

"We decline to read into the INA an additional clear-and-convincing-evidence burden on border officers," Thomas wrote.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Jackson argued the majority's ruling allows the government to demote a returning green card holder to "seeking an admission" status first and justify it later with evidence gathered after the fact. 

She said the ruling hands the government "a massive blank check" and undermines statutory protections Congress built into the law for lawful permanent residents, emphasizing the practical consequences for the affected residents, including confiscation of their permanent green cards, legal limbo that can last years, and exposure to the more burdensome inadmissibility proceedings. 

DC Circuit revives Trump's fast-track deportation policy

The D.C. Circuit on June 23 lifted a nationwide injunction that had blocked the Trump administration's use of expedited removal, clearing the way for immigration officials to quickly deport certain noncitizens anywhere in the country.

The policy, issued in January 2025 by then-Acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamin Huffman, allows expedited removal of noncitizens who cannot show they have continuously lived in the U.S. for at least two years. The move extended the fast-track deportation process to the broadest extent permitted by federal law.

Immigrant advocacy group Make the Road New York challenged the policy, and a federal district judge halted it in August 2025, finding the procedures likely failed to provide adequate due process protections.

Writing for the majority June 23, Circuit Judge Greg Katsas said the lower court applied the wrong constitutional standard. Katsas said the proper question comes from case law Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co. on whether the government provides notice reasonably calculated to inform affected individuals and gives them a meaningful opportunity to respond.

Under that standard, Katsas found the expedited removal system passes constitutionally. He pointed to procedures that provide written notice of inadmissibility charges, an opportunity to respond, supervisory review, referrals for credible-fear interviews when migrants express fear of persecution, and review by an immigration judge when a credible-fear claim is denied.

"There is no evidence that the Designation or Huffman Memorandum secretly restricts the right to notice and an opportunity to respond," Katsas wrote.

The majority also rejected arguments that immigration officials must affirmatively tell noncitizens they can avoid expedited removal by proving two years of continuous presence in the country.

Circuit Judge Neomi Rao agreed with the outcome but said the lawsuit should have been dismissed altogether. She wrote that Congress gave the executive branch "sole and unreviewable discretion" over expedited removal designations and largely barred courts from issuing nationwide injunctions in such cases.

Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins dissented from the result, arguing the procedures are inadequate for people arrested far from the border. He noted district court findings that some noncitizens who had lived in the country for more than two years were nevertheless deported under the expedited removal process.