The Trump Justice Department has gone to the Supreme Court with a strange case about whether a Nigerian man who says he was forced to cook for armed militants should be denied asylum because he fed them.
The Court agreed to take on the DOJ’s appeal in the case of Izuchukwu Ozurumba, whose meals he fed to a group known as the Unknown Gunmen were deemed by immigration authorities to be 'material support' for terrorism, according to a Bloomberg Law report.
Ozurumba's plight began in Nigeria in 2022, when he took a job he thought was fairly normal cooking at a remote camp. He soon found out that the people running the camp were part of a militant group that had a history of violence against the police and politicians.
According to the court records, he prepared three meals a day for 15 to 17 camp leaders. The armed guards would prevent him from leaving, and his employers eventually stopped paying him. He was there for about six months in total, three of which were without pay.
He finally escaped on a shopping trip, fleeing at a petrol station and hiding in the bush for two days. However, that wasn’t the end of his ordeal with the terror group. Ozurumba claimed that he was threatened and that men from the group attacked him with sticks and knives after he had left a church service. He eventually made his way out of Nigeria and entered the US in 2023, where he applied for asylum, claiming he was in fear of further attacks.
An immigration judge rejected his application in 2024, finding that cooking for the group amounted to material support to a terrorist organization. The Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed that decision, finding no exception for someone who provided such support under duress.
However, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, giving him a shot at getting asylum.
Writing for the majority, Judge Wynn concluded that Ozurumba was “simply a captive laborer” and that his cooking didn't in any way contribute to the terrorist activity. Wynn warned that if you treated every meal as terrorist support, it would “collapse the statute into absurdity.”
Judge Julius Richardson dissented, arguing that providing thousands of meals sustained the group's leadership and thus equaled material support.
The Trump administration appealed, arguing that the Fourth Circuit's interpretation was at odds with decisions in other circuits and could lead to "serious confusion" in the enforcement of immigration law.
However, in another twist, Ozurumba was deported to Nigeria in April 2025, months before the appeals court ruled in his favor.
That decision overturned the removal order a little too late but did not grant him asylum or require his immediate return to the US.
The Supreme Court will now be deciding just how far the terrorism related asylum bar goes, including in the case where the person who allegedly provided the support was held against their will.
