Can cooking for terrorists bar asylum? Supreme Court takes up unusual case with broader immigration stakes

A Nigerian man forced to cook thousands of meals for the Unknown Gunmen, a militant group linked to political violence in Nigeria, is at the center of a Supreme Court showdown that could determine how broadly immigration authorities can apply a terrorism-related bar to asylum and how far the Trump administration can go in deporting immigrants accused of supporting terrorism.

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to hear the Trump administration's challenge to a ruling that overturned Nigerian citizen Izuchukwu Ozurumba's deportation order, setting up a legal battle over whether ordinary services provided to terrorist organizations, including cooking meals, can disqualify immigrants from receiving asylum even when those services are not directly connected to terrorist attacks.

Ozurumba was deported to Nigeria in April 2025 while his appeal was pending.

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At the center of the case is a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that bars certain immigrants who provide "material support" to terrorist organizations from receiving asylum. The law lists examples of prohibited assistance, including transportation, communications, housing, money, weapons and training, but it does not explicitly define what constitutes material support.

"The biggest takeaway is that this is a case about who gets to draw the line on a law that affects national security," Bryce Poole, a senior legal fellow with Advancing American Freedom, told Fox News Digital. "Congress wrote a broad rule, and the court interpreted it narrowly."

The case also comes two years after the Supreme Court overturned Chevron deference, a legal doctrine that required judges to defer to federal agencies' reasonable interpretations of ambiguous laws. The 2024 ruling gave judges greater authority to decide what those laws mean.

The 4th Circuit, in a 2-1 ruling, overturned Ozurumba's deportation order and sent the case back to the Board of Immigration Appeals.

Judge James Wynn Jr., an Obama appointee, wrote the majority opinion, joined by Judge Nicole Berner, a Biden appointee. The judges concluded that, although Ozurumba prepared thousands of meals for the group's leaders, his cooking did not provide resources that could be directly used or readily redirected toward terrorist operations.

Although Ozurumba said he was forced to cook under threat of violence, the 4th Circuit did not decide whether the law contains an exception for assistance provided under duress, an issue the court previously addressed in a 2012 ruling that relied on Chevron deference. Instead, the majority found that his cooking for the terrorist organization did not qualify as "material support" that would bar him from asylum, leaving the separate duress question unresolved.

The Trump administration argued that the 4th Circuit interpreted the law too narrowly, insisting that even ordinary services such as cooking meals can help sustain a terrorist organization and free its members to carry out attacks.

"Because he's cooking the meals, one of the armed guards doesn't have to cook the meals and can be an armed guard," Poole said.

"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."

Ozurumba said he initially agreed to work as a chef at a "rural camp," preparing three meals a day for 15 to 17 leaders. He later learned the camp belonged to the Unknow