The Supreme Court will decide whether a man who spent six months cooking for a Nigerian terror group’s leaders can still win asylum in the United States.
Story Highlights
- The Trump administration asked the justices to settle how much help to a terror group is enough to bar someone from asylum.
- A federal appeals court ruled that cooking at a terror camp for about six months did not count as “material support” for terrorism.
- The government’s own immigration judges had ruled the opposite and denied the man asylum.
- A ruling would set one standard for immigration courts nationwide.
The Administration Takes Its Case to the High Court
The Supreme Court agreed to take up Blanche v. Ozurumba, No. 25-1343, on Tuesday, October 13. The administration brought the appeal because a lower court narrowed a key national-security rule in immigration law. That rule bars anyone who “affords material support” to a terrorist group from being admitted to the United States. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the administration’s top lawyer before the Supreme Court, filed the request in May. He asked the justices to make clear what kind of support makes an immigrant “removable and ineligible for various immigration benefits.”
The man in the case is Izuchukwu Ozurumba, a citizen of Nigeria. He worked as a cook at a camp run by the “Unknown Gunmen,” an armed separatist group in southern Nigeria, before he escaped. He later reached the United States through Venezuela and applied for asylum, the protection given to people who face harm in their home country. The case carries the name of Attorney General Todd Blanche, whose department is bringing the appeal.
What the Government Found
An immigration judge ruled that Ozurumba’s cooking was material support for terrorism and denied his asylum claim. The Board of Immigration Appeals, the government’s top immigration court, agreed. According to the court record, he cooked three meals a day for the camp’s 15 to 17 leaders for about six months.
An expert in his case testified that the Unknown Gunmen are likely Igbo separatists in the Biafra region of southern Nigeria. The Igbo are one of Nigeria’s largest ethnic groups. Biafra is the name separatists use for a homeland they want to split off from Nigeria.
What the Appeals Court Did
On Sept. 2, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, based in Richmond, Virginia, threw out the government’s ruling in a 2-1 vote. Judge James Wynn, writing for the majority, said the meals may have “sustained” the group. But he said Ozurumba provided “nothing that the organization could use or readily divert to plan or carry out its terrorist activities.”
The record also says Ozurumba asked to quit after he saw the camp’s violence, that his pay was cut off, and that guards would not let him leave. He escaped during a grocery run.
Judge Julius Richardson dissented. He wrote that cooking is material support because a fighting group needs to be fed, pointing to the old saying that “an army marches on its stomach.” He estimated Ozurumba cooked about 8,000 meals.
Why It Matters for Border Security
The material-support rule is one of the main tools immigration officers use to keep people tied to terror groups out of the country. If help must be something a group can use to plan attacks, as the appeals court ruled, fewer people will fall under the bar. If any steady help that keeps a group running counts, as the government’s immigration judges ruled, more will. The justices will hear arguments later in the term, and their answer will guide asylum cases in every immigration court.
Sources:
scotusblog.com, edition.cnn.com
