WASHINGTON: Does cooking for members of a Nigerian separatist group amount to providing "material support" for terrorism?
That's the thorny question facing the conservative-majority US Supreme Court.
In a brief order Tuesday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Trump administration's bid to reinstate the ruling that denied asylum to a Nigerian man who was deported for having provided material support to a terrorist group.
The case will be considered during the Court's current term, which began Oct 5 and runs through late June.
Beyond Izuchukwu Ozurumba's case, the ruling could have far-reaching implications for asylum seekers, depending largely on how the nine justices – six conservatives and three liberals – interpret the concept of "material support."
Izuchukwu Ozurumba says he was forced to cook for about six months at a separatist group's camp in southern Nigeria beginning in 2022.
He then fled to Venezuela and from there crossed the US-Mexico border illegally in the summer of 2023.
In 2024, a US immigration judge denied Ozurumba's asylum claim and ordered him deported citing a provision of US immigration law that bars foreign nationals who provide "material support" to a terrorist organisation from receiving asylum.
The decision was later upheld on appeal.
Ozurumba was deported to Nigeria in April 2025, according to his lawyers.
But a federal appeals court later overturned the earlier decisions and sent the case back to the immigration court for reconsideration.
"Cooking meals using food and supplies purchased by the organization may have 'sustained' the organization in the broadest possible sense...but provided nothing that the organization could use or readily divert to plan or carry out its terrorist activities," the appeals court wrote.
"As far as the record shows, Ozurumba was simply a captive labourer whose work had nothing to do with those activities."
The Trump administration, as part of its sweeping campaign of deportations of undocumented immigrants, is asking the Supreme Court to overturn the appeals court ruling.
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