New Supreme Court decision sends warning message to green card holders

New Supreme Court decision sends warning message to green card holders Trump administration has increasingly targeted legal immigration pathways in a government-wide mass deportation campaign - Bookmark - CommentsGo to comments The Supreme Court’s conservative majority gave Donald Trump’s administration a massive boost to support the president’s increasing threats to legal immigration by making it easier for border officers to challenge whether green card holders can return to the country. Tuesday’s 6-3 decision from Justice Clarence Thomas gives the government greater flexibility to treat returning green card holders as “applicants for admission” — and potentially vulnerable for detention and removal — based on unproven criminal allegations, even if key evidence develops after they’ve returned. Border officers do not need clear and convincing evidence that a lawful permanent resident in the U.S. has committed a serious crime before changing their status, according to the nation’s high court. In a lengthy dissent, liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the majority’s ruling “cavalierly swept aside” the rights of green card holders and handed the government a “massive blank check” to rewrite immigration law. The decision allows the government to upend the status of a green card holder returning to the U.S. “so long as the government is able to show later that he was eventually convicted,” she wrote. “That sequencing undermines the plain terms and basic operation of the relevant statutory scheme, which guarantees that [lawful permanent residents] will not be ‘regarded as seeking an admission’ at the border unless certain exceptions apply,” she added. Even if that person is acquitted, and the government’s attempt to remove them is thrown out, those decisions are likely to be “cold comfort” to the green card holder, “who by then might have spent years in legal limbo (with only the protection of a temporary green card) or worse, in detention,” the justice wrote. Tuesday’s victory for the Trump administration adds to the government’s growing threats against legal immigration pathways, despite the president’s insistence that federal law enforcement is targeting the “worst of the worst.” Under Trump, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has transformed from an agency largely tasked with administering benefits — including handling applications for citizenship, asylum and other lawful status — into another law enforcement arm in the president’s mass deportation campaign. Earlier this month, a federal judge determined that a series of USCIS policies illegally discriminated against “countless” asylum seekers, green card applicants and people seeking citizenship “solely by the happenstance of their birth.” The administration unlawfully used national security concerns that “mask anti-immigrant sentiments” to justify a sweeping set of immigration policies that have left thousands of people in legal limbo, U.S. District Judge John McConnell wrote in that decision. The Trump administration is also trying to strip Temporary Protected Status for more than 1 million immigrants as well as thousands of people who are already under Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervision. Tens of thousands of people who entered the country by using a Biden-era app to schedule their appearance at the U.S.-Mexico border were also told to immediately deport themselves. A judge earlier this year determined the administration unlawfully terminated their status. This is a developing story Join our commenting forum Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies Comments