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The Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to decide how far immigration law’s “material support” terrorism bar reaches, granting the Justice Department’s petition in Blanche v. Ozurumba, No. 25-1343. The case turns on a Nigerian man who says he was held at a camp and made to cook for the leaders of an armed separatist group, and on whether that work alone made him ineligible for asylum. The answer reaches well beyond one cook, because the same bar can block asylum, refugee status, a green card or a visa, and it falls hardest on people from places where armed groups take food, money and labor from civilians.
Eight thousand meals and one contested word
The statute, 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(3)(B)(iv)(VI), treats anyone who provides “material support” to a terrorist organization as having engaged in terrorist activity. It lists examples such as a safe house, transportation, funds, weapons and training, but it never defines “material.” The Board of Immigration Appeals has read the word broadly. In Matter of A-C-M-, 27 I&N Dec. 303 (BIA 2018), it held that even limited support counts, and it has said the bar contains no exception for support given under duress.
Izuchukwu Ozurumba’s case put that reading under strain. According to the Fourth Circuit’s opinion, he took a cook’s job in 2022 at a camp run by the “Unknown Gunmen,” which the immigration judge treated as an undesignated, or “Tier III,” terrorist organization. He cooked three meals a day for 15 to 17 leaders for about six months, says guards kept him from leaving, and escaped during a grocery run. The immigration judge and the Board applied the bar, and he was removed to Nigeria in 2025 while his appeal was pending.
On Sept. 2, 2025, a divided Fourth Circuit panel vacated the removal order. Judge James Wynn, joined by Judge Nicole Berner, held that support is material only if it is “sufficiently substantial standing alone to help the terrorist organization accomplish its terrorist activities,” and rejected the Board’s reading in A-C-M- as one that writes “material” out of the statute. Ozurumba, the majority wrote, “was simply a captive laborer whose work had nothing to do with those activities.” Judge Julius Richardson dissented. He counted roughly 8,000 meals and put his view in three words: “Food is support.”
The government argues, Reuters reported, that leaving the ruling in place would “substantially increase the burden on the government in excluding aliens with links to terrorism,” and that cooking meals is “no less a material form of support than providing gasoline for its vehicles.” SCOTUSblog reported that the petition also cites conflicts with Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (2010) and with Second and Third Circuit rulings treating food and shelter as material support, while Ozurumba’s lawyers call the split manufactured and the case a poor vehicle because the Fourth Circuit never decided whether duress is a defense.
Why the definition matters more in court than at USCIS
Congress gave the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security a safety valve: under 8 U.S.C. 1182(d)(3)(B)(i), they may exempt individuals from most terrorism bars. Exemptions for material support given under duress have existed since 2007, and USCIS applies them case by case. USCIS’s own reports to Congress show how the valve works in practice.
| Fiscal year | All TRIG exemptions applied by USCIS | Material support under duress | Processed for people seeking relief in immigration court |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY 2022 | 603 | 468 | 6 |
| FY 2023 | 2,085 | 1,573 | 6 |
Duress cases made up about three-quarters of all exemptions in both years, by our calculation from those reports. But only six a year were processed for people seeking relief from removal before the immigration courts. For someone in Ozurumba’s position, already in removal proceedings, the exemption route has been a narrow door, which is why the meaning of “material” in the statute so often decides the outcome.
In our view, the case could also become an early test of how much weight the Board’s readings of immigration statutes carry now that Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024) has ended Chevron deference, a point the Fourth Circuit majority raised about its own older duress precedent.
Where things stand until June
Reuters reported that a decision is expected by the end of June. Until then, the Fourth Circuit’s test continues to govern immigration courts in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina unless the Supreme Court sets it aside, and the Board’s broader reading applies elsewhere.
In our analysis, a ruling for the government would confirm that necessities such as food can be material support whatever their link to violence, leaving duress to the discretionary exemption process. A ruling for Ozurumba would make adjudicators ask what the support actually did for a group’s terrorist activity, which could matter in cases involving forced labor, extortion payments and small in-kind help. Because the Fourth Circuit left duress undecided, the justices may well resolve only the definition.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources
- Supreme Court of the United States, Order List (Oct. 13, 2026)
- Supreme Court docket, Blanche v. Ozurumba, No. 25-1343
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, Ozurumba v. Bondi, No. 24-2070 (Sept. 2, 2025)
- 8 U.S.C. 1182
- USCIS, Terrorism-Related Inadmissibility Grounds (TRIG): Situational Exemptions
- USCIS, TRIG exemptions report to Congress, FY 2022
- USCIS, TRIG exemptions report to Congress, FY 2023
- Reuters, “US Supreme Court to hear asylum fight involving Nigerian cook” (Oct. 13, 2026)
- SCOTUSblog, “The first relists of the 2026-27 term” (Oct. 7, 2026)
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