The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a lower court decision that found a legal permanent resident from Jamaica named Andre Martello Barton ineligible to have his deportation canceled under a U.S. law that lets some longtime legal residents avoid expulsion.

Barton was targeted for deportation after criminal convictions in Georgia for drug and gun crimes.

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in support of the lower court's decision, with the conservative justices in the majority.

The ruling is seen to have now made it easier for federal authorities to deport certain immigrants have committed crimes.

President Donald Trump has been vocal in calls for the expulsion of immigrants from the U.S. He has justified his immigration crackdown in part by citing crimes committed by immigrants.

At issue in the Barton case was the meaning of a 1996 change - known as the “stop-time rule" - in U.S. immigration law. This provision disqualifies immigrants who commit certain crimes from this discretionary benefit by stopping the clock on their period of continuous residency.

The federal government had said the rule was triggered in Barton's case because his assault charge would bar his admission into the country, even though as of 1996 he had resided in the United States too long to be declared deportable for that crime.

Barton argued that he could not be found inadmissible because he had already been lawfully admitted.

Barton, a car repair shop manager and father of four, came to the United States as a teenager with his mother in 1989. He was convicted in Georgia in 1996 of assault and possession of a firearm in an incident in which his friend shot at a house from a car he was driving. Barton also was convicted of drug possession in 2007 and 2008.

In 2017, immigration authorities decided Barton's deportation could not be canceled because the 1996 assault charges triggered the stop-time rule, just months before he reached the seven-year milestone. The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision in 2018.