When a Green Card Employee Is Stopped at the Airport: Employer Duties After Blanche v. Lau

Kate Kalmykov, Shareholder | Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Kate Kalmykov co-chairs the Global Immigration & Compliance Practice at Greenberg Traurig and works from the firm’s New York and New Jersey offices. She brings more than two decades of business immigration experience to employers of every size, advising on temporary and permanent residency options for executive, business, scientific, and information technology personnel, and on the global transfer of company staff. Clients turn to her for strategy in unusual fact patterns, for complex responses to Requests for Evidence and Notices of Intent to Deny, and for appeals of denied cases. She also builds employer compliance programs covering Department of Labor filings such as H-1Bs and PERMs, along with I-9 employment eligibility verification — developing nationwide I-9 trainings and policy manuals for human resources teams, advising E-Verify employers, counseling on how to avoid immigration-related unfair employment practice claims, and limiting penalties in government audits. Much of her work is cross-border and coordinated with the firm’s labor, employment, tax, and benefits lawyers.

• Education & Credentials

She earned her J.D. from American University Washington College of Law and an M.A. in International Affairs from American University, both in 2005, following a B.A. in International Studies, magna cum laude, from American University in 2002. She is admitted in New York and New Jersey and before the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, and she is fluent in Russian.

• Recognition & Leadership

Her listings include The Best Lawyers in America for Immigration Law (2019–2026), Lawdragon’s 100 Leading Immigration Lawyers (2023–2025) and its 500 Leading U.S. Corporate Employment Lawyers (2020–2026), Chambers USA Guide (2013–2025), The Legal 500 United States for Labor and Employment – Immigration (2015–2022, named “Other Key Lawyer” in 2022), and New York Metro Super Lawyers (2021–2025, Rising Stars 2012–2020). She was named a “Women Attorney of the Year” by the New Jersey Law Journal in 2024 and a “New Leader of the Bar” by the same publication in 2012, a “Go-To Thought Leader: Immigration Law” by the National Law Review in 2022, one of NJBIZ’s “Best 50 Women in Business” in 2019, and a National Law Journal Immigration “Trailblazer” in 2018.

• Professional Involvement

She has co-chaired the American Bar Association’s Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Section of Administrative Law, since 2011, and previously served as programs chair of the Immigration Litigation Committee in the Section of Litigation. She has been president of the Council of Jewish Émigré Community Organizations since 2016 and was a founding member of The EB-5 Immigration Coalition. Within the American Immigration Lawyers Association she has served on the EB-5, annual conference planning, and distance learning committees, and in the New York and New Jersey chapters she chaired the Continuing Legal Education Committee and sat on the USCIS District Director and Customs and Border Protection liaison committees. She is also a member of the International Bar Association’s Immigration and
Nationality Law Committee, the New Jersey Business Immigration Coalition, and the National Association of Women Lawyers, and she served on Law360’s Immigration Editorial Advisory Board.

• Experience

She has worked on every aspect of the EB-5 immigrant investor program, representing real estate developers, private equity funds, and other sponsors on regional center designations, project pre-approvals, EB-5-compliant structuring, regional center sales, template I-526 petitions, and direct EB-5 projects. Under the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act she prepares I-956, I-956F, I-956G, I-956H, and I-956K submissions and builds ongoing compliance programs for regional centers, projects, overseas migration agents, and broker-dealers. She has represented thousands of investors, structured the largest EB-5 offering in the program’s history, and structured more than $12 billion in EB-5 transactions over her career. At the request of the American Bar Association she co-authored “What Every Lawyer Needs to Know About Immigration Law,” and she has published in ABA and AILA practice handbooks and in outlets including the New York Law Journal, the New Jersey Law Journal, and USA Today. She is a frequent media commentator, including for the Wall Street Journal and Law360, and has appeared on CNN. Her pro bono work covers asylum, Temporary Protected Status, and humanitarian parole for clients fleeing conflict and persecution.

Courtney Brooks, Shareholder | Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Courtney Brooks co-chairs the Immigration & Compliance Practice at Greenberg Traurig and practices from the firm’s Atlanta office. Her work spans U.S. business immigration, compliance, and enforcement actions, as well as global immigration. She represents large multinational corporations and small start-ups across the full range of employment-based categories — from permanent residence filings including PERM, national interest waivers, extraordinary ability and outstanding researcher petitions, and multinational manager petitions, through nonimmigrant classifications including H-1B, H-3, J-1, L-1A/B, O-1, and TN — with particular familiarity with the retail industry and the pressures it faces. A substantial share of her practice addresses I-9 employment verification, enforcement actions, and H-1B and LCA compliance, delivered proactively through onsite training, internal audits and reviews, and practices designed to reduce exposure before a government investigation begins.

• Education & Credentials

She received her J.D. from Georgia State University College of Law in 2010 and a B.Com. from McGill University in 2004. She is admitted in New Jersey and New York; her firm profile notes that she is not admitted in Georgia and that her practice is limited to federal immigration practice. She is fluent in Italian and conversational in French and Spanish.

• Recognition & Leadership

She has been listed among Lawdragon’s 100 Leading Immigration Lawyers (2024–2026), in the Chambers USA Guide for Immigration (2021–2026, recognized as “Up and Coming” in 2021), and in The Best Lawyers in America for Immigration Law (2021–2026). She was named to the Southeastern Legal Awards’ Best
Mentors list in 2023, recognized as a “Georgia Trailblazer” by the Daily Report and an “Immigration Law Trailblazer” by the National Law Journal in 2019, and listed in The Legal 500 United States for Labor and Employment – Immigration in 2019.

Professional Involvement

She is a member of the International Bar Association and of both the New York chapter and the Southeast chapter of the Italy-America Chamber of Commerce. She contributes to the firm’s EB-5 Insights, Labor & Employment, and Inside Business Immigration blogs.

• Experience

She advises multinational clients on global mobility, moving key personnel into markets around the world. Before entering practice she served as a Business Development and Project Manager with the Georgia Department of Economic Development from 2006 to 2009, where she worked in life sciences business development helping technology and life sciences companies relocate to and expand in Georgia — work that put her in regular contact with the global mobility needs of international and domestic employers. In the fall of 2009 she externed with the Internal Revenue Service, Office of General Counsel, Large and Mid-Size Business Division, Strategic Litigation. She has studied, lived, and worked in Canada, France, and Italy.

SESSION 1 – Preventing the Airport Stop: Travel Screening Protocols for Greem Card Employees | 1:00pm – 2:00pm

This session examines the Supreme Court’s June 2026 decision in Blanche v. Lau and its direct implications for employers whose lawful permanent resident employees travel internationally. Attorneys will learn how to build a pre-travel screening protocol that identifies at-risk employees before departure, coordinates criminal defense and immigration counsel, and accounts for the expanded CBP biometric entry/exit program effective December 2025. Attendees will leave able to advise clients on the specific risk factors that now trigger heightened border scrutiny, the parole-versus-admission distinction that can disrupt work authorization, and the contingency planning steps that reduce employer exposure when an LPR employee’s reentry goes wrong.

BREAK | 2:00pm – 2:10pm

SESSION 2 – Work Authorization and I-9 Compliance When a Green Card Employee’s Reentry Goes Wrong | 2:10pm – 3:10pm

This session examines what employers must do — and must avoid — when a lawful permanent resident employee’s international travel results in a border parole, document confiscation, or prolonged absence under Blanche v. Lau. Attorneys will learn the I-9 rules governing temporary I-551 stamps, the anti-discrimination constraints that limit employer document requests, and how to build internal protocols for employment continuity when an LPR employee’s reentry goes wrong. Attendees leave with a working framework for reverification triggers, leave decisions, and voluntary criminal disclosure protocols in a post-Lau environment.