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The Supreme Court has agreed to take up a Trump administration challenge built around an unusual question: can cooking meals for a terrorist group bar someone from asylum in the United States?
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Shop NowThe justices agreed Tuesday to hear the government’s appeal of a lower court ruling that overturned the deportation order of Izuchukwu Ozurumba, a Nigerian citizen, Fox News reported. The Court has not ruled on the merits. The case sets up a fight over how broadly immigration authorities can apply the law’s “material support” bar.
Ozurumba says he took a job as a chef at a rural camp, preparing three meals a day for 15 to 17 leaders, and later learned the camp belonged to the Unknown Gunmen, a militant group linked to political violence in Nigeria.
He says armed guards kept him from leaving. According to court records, he cooked for the group for about six months, three of them unpaid, before escaping during a trip to buy groceries.
An immigration judge classed the group as a Tier III terrorist organization, though the State Department has not designated it.
He crossed the southern border without valid entry documents in July 2023 and surrendered to Border Patrol.
An immigration judge denied asylum and ordered him deported, and the Board of Immigration Appeals agreed. He was deported to Nigeria in April 2025 while his appeal was pending.
The Immigration and Nationality Act bars asylum for people who give material support to terrorist organizations.
It lists examples such as transportation, money, weapons and training, but does not define the term.
In a 2-1 ruling, the 4th Circuit found that Ozurumba’s cooking did not supply resources that could be directly used or readily redirected toward terrorist operations.
It did not decide whether the law excuses help given under duress. Judge Julius Richardson dissented, writing that Ozurumba had “acted as a private chef” for the group’s leaders.
The administration argues the circuit read the law too narrowly, saying even ordinary services free a group’s members to carry out attacks.
Fox quoted two legal analysts from Advancing American Freedom who backed that view. One, Hans von Spakovsky, said other federal appeals courts have held that food and shelter count as material support. The article carried no comment from Ozurumba or his lawyers.
It arrives two years after the Court overturned Chevron deference, giving judges more power over ambiguous laws.
A ruling in Ozurumba’s favor would not automatically grant asylum or bring him back. Immigration authorities would still have to reconsider his case.
