Supreme Court will decide if cooking for terrorists bars asylum

The Supreme Court will review whether cooking thousands of meals for terrorist leaders bars asylum, as the Trump administration challenges a narrow appeals court ruling with broad immigration stakes.

The high court agreed Tuesday to take up the Trump administration’s challenge to a Fourth Circuit decision that blocked deportation of Nigerian citizen Izuchukwu Ozurumba. At issue is whether ordinary services such as cooking can trigger the material-support bar that keeps people out of the asylum system under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Fox News reported that Ozurumba crossed the southern border without valid entry documents in July 2023, surrendered to Border Patrol, and later sought asylum. An immigration judge denied the claim and ordered him removed after finding he had cooked for leaders of the Unknown Gunmen, a militant group tied to political violence in Nigeria. The Board of Immigration Appeals upheld that order.

A divided Fourth Circuit panel later overturned the deportation order in a 2-1 ruling and sent the case back. Judges James Wynn Jr., an Obama appointee, and Nicole Berner, a Biden appointee, formed the majority. They concluded that preparing thousands of meals did not supply resources that could be directly used or readily redirected toward terrorist operations. The panel left unresolved whether the law contains any exception for help given under duress.

Ozurumba was deported to Nigeria in April 2025 while his appeal was still pending. The Fourth Circuit had already declined to order the government to bring him back, leaving that call to officials. Even a win at the Supreme Court would not automatically restore him to the United States or grant asylum.

Thousands of meals for a Tier III group

Ozurumba’s account, as described in court records, is that he first agreed to work as a chef at a rural camp in Nigeria. He said he prepared three meals a day for 15 to 17 leaders, cooked for roughly six months, including three months without pay, and only later learned the camp belonged to the Unknown Gunmen. He claimed armed guards kept him from leaving, that he escaped during a grocery run, and that members kept threatening him afterward. He fled through Venezuela before reaching the U.S. border.

The immigration judge classified the Unknown Gunmen as a “Tier III” terrorist organization under federal immigration law even though the State Department had not formally designated the group. That finding let the material-support rule apply. The statute lists examples such as transportation, communications, housing, money, weapons, and training, but it does not spell out every form of help that counts.

Judge Julius Richardson dissented from the Fourth Circuit majority and rejected the idea that the cooking was minor or accidental.

"Ozurumba did not run a hot dog stand that the Unknown Gunmen happened to stop by once or twice. Rather, he acted as a private chef, providing three meals a day for over a dozen leaders of a terrorist organization, for months."

Richardson argued the sustained meal service freed the group’s leaders to focus on organizational goals and therefore met the material-support standard.

Administration says the Fourth Circuit read the law too narrowly

The Trump administration told the Supreme Court the appeals panel interpreted the statute too tightly. Officials argue that ordinary services such as cooking help sustain a terrorist organization and free members to carry out attacks. Breitbart noted that the Justice Department also says the Fourth Circuit decision conflicts with other federal appeals courts and would make it harder to remove immigrants with terrorism ties.

In its filing the department put the point bluntly.

"Providing meals to a terrorist organization’s members is no less a material form of support than providing gasoline for its vehicles."

Legal voices aligned with that view stressed the practical effect of daily cooking. Bryce Poole, senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom, told reporters the case is really about who draws the line on a national-security statute.

"Because he's cooking the meals, one of the armed guards doesn't have to cook the meals and can be an armed guard. That's one guard who doesn't have to come in off guard duty to cook meals, or that's one bomb maker who doesn't have to stop making bombs to go cook meals, because all this stuff is fungible."

Poole added that Congress wrote a broad rule and the Fourth Circuit read it narrowly. Hans von Spakovsky, also of Advancing American Freedom, said the majority’s approach defies common sense and runs against the weight of other circuits.

"The idea that providing over 8,000 meals for the leaders of a terrorist organization and its members is not 'material' defies common sense. Other federal appeals courts have all held that providing food and shelter, even if unconnected to a specific terrorist event, constitutes material support within the statute. And doing so under duress, even if true, is not an excuse under the statute to avoid removal."

Von Spakovsky noted that Richardson correctly cited Napoleon’s line that an army marches on its stomach. Those points matter because the statute’s purpose is to keep people who have aided terrorist groups from receiving the protection of asylum, not to litigate whether every meal can be traced to a specific attack.

Chevron’s end and the duress question

The Fourth Circuit once addressed a related duress issue in a 2012 ruling that leaned on Chevron deference, the old doctrine that told courts to defer to agencies’ reasonable readings of ambiguous laws. The Supreme Court overturned Chevron in 2024. That shift leaves less room for narrow judicial glosses that shrink a statute Congress wrote in broad terms, a pattern also visible when the Trump administration returns to the Supreme Court to defend clear enforcement rules elsewhere.

The current panel did not decide whether any duress exception exists. Ozurumba’s claim that he cooked under threat remains contested as a factual matter and, under the reading pressed by the administration and by von Spakovsky, would not excuse material support even if true. The Board of Immigration Appeals will have to revisit the case if the Supreme Court restores the deportation order’s legal foundation.

National-security immigration rules only work when the lines are drawn where Congress put them. Softening “material support” into a requirement of direct operational use invites endless litigation over every meal, ride, or roof. Taxpayers and lawful residents absorb the cost when those lines blur. Similar institutional fights over the Court’s authority have already drawn sharp reactions, including warnings that Democrats could try to impeach Trump and pack the Supreme Court after a midterm win.

What a ruling would actually decide

The justices are not being asked to grant Ozurumba asylum. They are being asked whether the Fourth Circuit correctly cabined the material-support bar so that months of daily cooking for terrorist leaders falls outside it. A decision restoring the broader reading would align the Fourth Circuit with other appeals courts and give immigration judges clearer ground to deny claims from people who have sustained designated or Tier III groups.

It would also reinforce that the asylum system is not a second chance for those who have already aided organizations that use violence for political ends. Ozurumba entered illegally, sought protection after the fact, and was removed while the case continued. The government is not required to ferry every removed alien back to the United States simply because an appeals court later disagrees with an immigration judge.

Democratic leaders have already floated structural changes when high-court outcomes disappoint them, from calls for a 13-justice Supreme Court to other pressure campaigns. This case will test whether the material-support statute still means what its text says when the help takes the everyday form of food service rather than guns or cash.

Other recent emergency and merits fights show the same pattern of the administration asking the justices to keep lower courts from rewriting enforcement statutes. One example is the effort to revive a Clinton-related lawsuit after successive lower-court sanctions. Another is the Court’s willingness to turn away appeals that stretch judicial power, including when it rejected a Pennsylvania judge’s appeal over partisan social-media activity. The Ozurumba grant fits that larger insistence on statutory text over creative narrowing.

Border security and asylum integrity rise or fall on whether material support is treated as the broad national-security rule Congress wrote. Cooking three meals a day for terrorist leaders for months is not a technicality. It is sustainment. The Supreme Court now has the chance to say so in plain terms and put the Fourth Circuit back in line with the rest of the country.