The Supreme Court said Tuesday it will decide whether a Nigerian who says he was forced to serve as a cook for a terrorist organization can claim asylum in the U.S., in a case that goes to the heart of what it means to materially support terrorism.
The administration argued that Izuchukwu Ozurumba crossed the line when he agreed to take a job as a cook at a camp for the Unknown Gunman, a Nigerian separatist organization.
But the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that, saying that preparing food isn’t the same as strategizing, financing or obtaining weapons for terrorists. In a 2-1 decision, the appeals court ordered a do-over of Mr. Ozurumba’s asylum case.
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The justices will now settle the matter.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, in his petition asking the court to take the case, said it should have been an easy win for the government.
“Respondent does not dispute that he cooked thousands of meals for the leadership of a terrorist organization. Cooking is material support,” he said.
Mr. Ozurumba’s lawyers said it’s unclear that the Unknown Gunman is a terrorist group, much less that being forced to cook for it equates to helping terrorists.
Circuit Judge James Wynn, an Obama appointee, agreed.
“To say that every provision of food is support for terrorism is to collapse the statute into absurdity,” he said.
Otherwise, he said, a soup kitchen that feeds the hungry — some of whom could be terrorists — would be aiding terrorism.
Circuit Judge Julius Richardson, a Trump pick to the 4th Circuit, dissented.
He cited Napoleon’s maxim that an “army marches on its stomach” as illustrating the centrality of cooking to a military force’s goals.
It took agreement of at least four justices for the high court to take the case. It will be heard during the current term, which began this month and runs into next summer.
The case could give the justices a chance to opine on the contours of material support for terrorism — a charge that has been used with some frequency in the 25 years since the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The Intercept’s Trial and Terror project said that material support accounted for 54% of the nearly 1,000 terrorism defendants prosecuted from 2001 to 2023.
In Mr. Ozurumba’s case, material support is also a fixture of deciding who is barred from protection under immigration and asylum law.
Mr. Ozurumba said he cooked three meals a day for six months for 15 or more leaders of the group in Nigeria.
He said he didn’t know who they were when he took the job, but once at the rural compound he realized they were engaged in nefarious activities. He said eventually he tried to quit but was forced to keep cooking.
He escaped while on a trip to buy groceries, using a bathroom break to flee from his guards. He said the organization harassed him, at one point beating him senseless, which is when he decided to flee.
He went to Venezuela, where he was more than a decade earlier, then headed north to the U.S., where he jumped the border in July 2023. He was caught and released under Biden administration policies, letting him mount an asylum defense.
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