WASHINGTON—A lawyer for the U.S. government told several skeptical Supreme Court justices that a defendant doesn’t have to be aware of his immigration status in order to be convicted of a federal firearms crime.
The case involves Hamid Mohamed Ahmed Ali Rehaif of the United Arab Emirates, whose student visa expired in 2015 after the Florida Institute of Technology dismissed him for poor academic performance. The government claims that in January 2015, the school notified Rehaif by email that his visa was soon to expire.
