The US land border definition of essential travel explicitly includes "US citizens and lawful permanent residents returning to the United States." Is the phrase "returning to the United States" intended to indicate the existence of circumstances under which US CBP would refuse land entry to a US citizen right now for any purpose of travel, or does it merely mean that Canada and Mexico might not allow Americans entry in the other direction? In a literal sense I am "returning to the US" in that I have been there before (including as a resident), but I don't live there now and am not planning to change that on this entry.
I'm a US citizen and a Canadian permanent resident living in Canada, and I am planning on driving south next Friday while my Canadian citizen / non-US wife flies south to meet me and our car at a US airport. I will be showing my current valid US passport to the CBP officer. Within the US we are planning to do normal short-term visitor activities (as modified by COVID precautions including testing and quarantine), like visiting mostly-vaccinated family and friends, before leaving the US again after several weeks. We are not planning to seek to adjust her status to LPR during this entry (though filing an I-130 for eventual consular processing at the US Consulate in Montreal might happen).
As per our Canadian statuses, neither of us will be denied re-entry to Canada when it's time to go home. (We'll re-enter in compliance with Canada's pandemic public health measures.) But I would hate not to be present at her US arrival airport to pick her up due to some unexpected temporary land border refusal applicable to US citizens.
Thanks for any reassurances.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/immigration/comments/me5nno/restrictions_on_us_citizens_entering_us_by_land/