A Nigerian man who cooked for a terror group’s camp, then escaped, is now at the center of a Supreme Court fight over whether he can get asylum in America.
Story Highlights
- On Tuesday, October 13, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Trump administration’s appeal in the case of Izuchukwu Ozurumba, a Nigerian man seeking asylum here.
- Ozurumba cooked for about six months at a camp run by the “Unknown Gunmen,” an armed separatist group in southern Nigeria.
- Immigration judges ruled his cooking was “material support” for terrorism, which bars asylum. A federal appeals court disagreed.
- The justices will hear arguments later in the term and decide after that.
A Cooking Job That Led to a Terror Camp
The administration took the case to the Supreme Court because it wants the justices to make clear what kind of help to a terror group bars a person from asylum. Asylum is protection the United States gives to people who face harm in their home country. The administration’s own immigration judges ruled that Ozurumba’s meals were enough to shut that door. The appeals court said they were not.
According to the appeals court’s record, Ozurumba was desperate for work in Nigeria when an acquaintance told him about a cook job. He was sent to a bus station, and a van drove him about 45 minutes to a rural camp with armed guards. The camp’s boss said he would be hired if the leaders liked his cooking. They did. He then cooked three meals a day for the camp’s 15 to 17 leaders.
The Unknown Gunmen are a separatist group. An expert in his case testified that they are likely Igbo separatists who operate in the Biafra region of southern Nigeria. The Igbo are one of Nigeria’s largest ethnic groups, and Biafra is the name separatists use for a homeland they want to split off from Nigeria.
He Tried to Quit, Then Ran
The record says Ozurumba became upset by the violence at the camp and told a leader he wanted to quit. He was told to keep working. The leaders stopped paying him, and guards would not let him leave. He stayed about six months in all, three of them without pay.
His chance came on a grocery run. While a camp member drove him to buy food, they stopped for gas, and Ozurumba asked to use the restroom. He ran through an open gate into the bush, hid for two days and made his way to Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. He later went to Venezuela and then to the United States, where he applied for asylum.
What “Material Support” Means Here
“Material support” is a part of U.S. immigration law. It bars anyone who gave real help to a terrorist group from getting asylum or entering the country. The law covers anyone who “affords material support” to such a group. The fight is over how much help counts.
An immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals, the government’s top immigration court, said cooking for the camp counted. In a ruling on Sept. 2, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, based in Richmond, Virginia, reversed that in a 2-1 vote. Judge James Wynn wrote for the majority. He said the meals may have “sustained” the group, but Ozurumba gave it “nothing that the organization could use or readily divert to plan or carry out its terrorist activities.”
Judge Julius Richardson disagreed. He wrote that cooking is support because a fighting group needs to be fed, citing the old saying that “an army marches on its stomach.”
What Comes Next
Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the administration’s top lawyer before the Supreme Court, filed the request in May. The case is called Blanche v. Ozurumba, No. 25-1343, after Attorney General Todd Blanche, whose department brings the appeal. The justices will now hear both sides, and their ruling will set one rule for immigration courts across the country on how much help to a terror group is too much.
