The Supreme Court will decide if a Nigerian man who cooked meals for a terrorist camp can still win asylum, after lower courts split on whether feeding fighters counts as material support.
The justices on Tuesday agreed to hear the Trump administration’s challenge in the case of Izuchukwu Ozurumba, a Nigerian who sought protection in the United States after working as a camp cook for the separatist group known as the Unknown Gunmen. NBC News reported the high court will review whether that work triggers the federal bar on asylum for anyone who has “engaged in terrorist activity,” including by providing material support.
An immigration judge said it does. A federal appeals court said it does not. The Supreme Court will settle the fight later this term.
The dispute sits at the center of a larger push by the Trump administration to tighten asylum rules and keep people with terrorist ties out of the country. Lawful entry and honest claims matter. So does refusing to reward anyone who fed a violent group.
Ozurumba says he took a job as a camp cook in Nigeria in 2022 before learning the camp was run by the Unknown Gunmen. He worked about six months, half of it unpaid, then escaped. He later claimed members of the group threatened to kill him.
He crossed the U.S. southern border in July 2023 and asked for asylum. An immigration judge rejected the claim, finding that cooking three meals a day for the group amounted to material support for terrorists under U.S. immigration law.
That law blocks entry for anyone who has “engaged in terrorist activity.” Officials treat material support as part of that bar. The judge applied it to the daily cooking.
Ozurumba was deported in April 2025. His case continued anyway.
Five months after the deportation, the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in his favor. The appeals court held that cooking did not qualify as material support.
That ruling put a clear split on the table. One forum treated three meals a day for a terrorist camp as aid. The other treated it as something short of the legal bar.
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to step in and restore the broader reading. The justices agreed to consider the bid. They will hear arguments and issue a decision later in the term, which runs until June.
Federal law is not written to reward people who keep terrorist fighters fed. Material support has long covered more than guns and money. Food, labor, and logistics keep a camp running. An immigration judge saw the daily meals that way. The 4th Circuit did not.
Ozurumba’s account is that he took the cook job without first knowing who ran the camp, worked partly without pay, fled, and then feared for his life. Those claims shaped his asylum request. They do not erase the work itself or the government’s interest in enforcing the terrorist-activity bar.
In the coming weeks, the justices are also expected to decide whether to hear a separate Trump administration appeal seeking to maintain a broad block on asylum claims at the U.S.-Mexico border. The cooking case and the border-wide fight both test how tightly the government may police who gets to claim protection after crossing.
Washington is the venue. Nigeria is where the camp work happened. The southern border is where the asylum claim began. The 4th Circuit is where the material-support finding was wiped away. The Supreme Court now owns the next word.
If cooking three meals a day for a terrorist group is not material support, the bar means far less than the statute suggests. Taxpayers and lawful residents should not have to accept that result as common sense.
Asylum is a shield for the hunted, not a loophole for anyone who kept a terrorist camp fed.
