Supreme Court takes up DOGE documents fight and an asylum plea from a chef for terrorists

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The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to take up a pair of appeals from President Donald Trump’s administration, including a case about the Department of Government Efficiency, the government-cutting entity once run by Elon Musk, and a dispute about a Nigerian man who was denied asylum because he once cooked meals for members of a terrorist organization.

The two cases are a reflection of Trump’s return to power last year, both his crackdown on immigration and his moves to slash government spending.

The DOGE case raises fundamental questions about the power and transparency of an entity that slashed agencies with unusual speed last year. A left-leaning watchdog, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, sued to gain access to those documents under a federal transparency law, and lower federal courts have ordered DOGE to produce information to help decide whether the law applies.

The asylum case centers on a Nigerian national who served as a cook for a separatist group carrying out terrorist attacks, a dispute that the Trump administration says could affect thousands of immigration cases annually.

The Trump administration appealed lower court orders requiring DOGE to disclose records, arguing that separation of powers concerns should bar such “wide-ranging and intrusive discovery” demands from federal courts. Those orders, the Justice Department told the Supreme Court, would “perversely give respondent much of the information that it sought in its” request for documents under the Freedom of Information Act “before any court has held that FOIA applies.”

While DOGE has slipped from public view, it had a significant impact on the federal government – carrying out Trump’s promise of limiting the federal government. Central to the case is whether DOGE was exercising power on its own, which might make it subject to open records requests, or whether it was merely acting as an advisory body to the president, in which case it would likely be shielded from those requests.

The Trump administration, which the president frequently claims is the most transparent in history, has aggressively fought the case, describing DOGE as a “presidential advisory body” within the White House that is tasked “with providing recommendations” rather than making decisions.

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Over the dissent of the three liberal justices, the Supreme Court last year came down on the side of DOGE in an earlier stage of the case, requiring lower courts to narrow the scope of the material ordered in discovery. CREW withdrew its request for certain documents but lower courts allowed other requests to stand. Now, the Supreme Court will decide if the more pared down requests were proper.

The lower court ordered DOGE to provide all “directives” by its administrator to its employees, to disclose any plans to access classified information and a deposition by the head of DOGE, Amy Gleason.

Izuchukwu Ozurumba, who entered the United States in 2023 and later claimed asylum, says he was forced to cook at a camp for the Unknown Gunmen in Nigeria until he escaped during a run for groceries and gas. An immigration judge denied his asylum claim under a federal law that bars sanctuary for any migrant who provided “material support” to a terrorist organization.

The Supreme Court has increasingly made immigration a central theme of its new term. It is already reviewing Trump’s push to deport migrants to countries they have no connection with and his administration’s mandatory detention policies .

“Providing meals to a terrorist organization’s members is no less a material form of support than providing gasoline for its vehicles,” US Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the Trump administration’s top appellate attorney, told the Supreme Court in its appeal.

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Ozurumba was deported to Nigeria in 2025.

The Trump administration told the justices the particulars of Ozurumba’s case don’t matter. The law, it argued, “does not distinguish between guns and butter.”

But the Richmond-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals focused on the word “material” in the law, finding that Ozurumba’s six-month stint cooking meals for the separatist group didn’t meet that threshold. Ozurumba’s lawyers said their client didn’t realize what he was getting into when he sought the job and then was forced to continue to perform it against his will.

“Under the government’s reading, seemingly any interaction with a terrorist organization could be characterized as material support,” his attorneys said. A priest who hears confession to all comers, they argue, would be viewed as providing spiritual counsel. A doctor who treats a patient affiliated with a terrorist organization, they argue, could also be punished.

“Under such a test, ‘material’ loses all meaning – every conceivable form of support, no matter how attenuated, compelled, or incidental, would suffice,” they told the justices.

Decisions in both cases are expected by next summer.

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最高法院周二同意受理唐纳德·特朗普总统政府提出的两项上诉，其中包括一起关于政府效率部的案件（该部门曾由埃隆·马斯克领导，负责削减政府开支），以及一起关于一名尼日利亚男子因曾为恐怖组织成员做饭而被拒绝庇护的争议。

这两个案例反映了特朗普去年重返政坛后采取的措施，包括打击移民和削减政府开支。

华盛顿州政府雇员工会（DOGE）案引发了人们对该机构权力和透明度的根本性质疑，该机构去年以异常快的速度大幅削减了多个部门。一个左倾的监督组织“华盛顿公民责任与道德组织”（Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington）提起诉讼，要求根据联邦透明度法获取相关文件。下级联邦法院已责令DOGE提供信息，以帮助判断该法律是否适用。

这起庇护案件的焦点是一名尼日利亚国民，他曾为一个实施恐怖袭击的分离主义组织担任厨师。特朗普政府表示，这一争议可能会影响每年数千起移民案件。

特朗普政府对下级法院要求纽约州政府雇员办公室（DOGE）披露记录的命令提出上诉，辩称权力分立原则应阻止联邦法院提出此类“范围广泛且侵入性极强的取证”要求。司法部告诉最高法院，这些命令“在任何法院裁定《信息自由法》适用之前，就将使被告方获得其根据《信息自由法》提出的文件请求中所寻求的大部分信息，这显然是荒谬的”。

尽管DOGE已淡出公众视野，但它对联邦政府产生了重大影响——它兑现了特朗普限制联邦政府权力的承诺。此案的关键在于，DOGE是否独立行使权力（如果是，则可能受信息公开请求约束），还是仅仅作为总统的咨询机构（如果是，则很可能不受此类请求约束）。

特朗普政府（总统经常声称这是历史上最透明的政府）积极应对此案，称狗狗银行是白宫内的“总统顾问机构”，其任务是“提供建议”，而不是做出决定。

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尽管三位自由派大法官持反对意见，最高法院去年在案件早期阶段仍支持了狗狗保险公司（DOGE）的立场，要求下级法院缩小证据开示的范围。公民责任与道德组织（CREW）撤回了部分文件的请求，但下级法院允许其他请求继续有效。现在，最高法院将裁定这些精简后的请求是否合理。

下级法院命令 DOGE 向其员工提供其主管的所有“指令”，披露任何获取机密信息的计划，并要求 DOGE 负责人 Amy Gleason 作证。

伊祖楚库·奥祖伦巴于2023年进入美国，后申请庇护。他声称自己被迫在尼日利亚一个“无名枪手”组织的营地里做饭，直到一次外出购买食品和汽油时逃脱。移民法官依据一项联邦法律驳回了他的庇护申请，该法律禁止向任何向恐怖组织提供“物质支持”的移民提供庇护。

最高法院已将移民问题日益作为其新任期的核心议题。目前，最高法院正在审查特朗普政府将移民遣返回与其毫无关联的国家的举措，以及其政府的强制拘留政策。

“向恐怖组织成员提供食物与向其车辆提供汽油一样，都是一种物质支持，”特朗普政府首席上诉律师、美国副检察长 D·约翰·绍尔在向最高法院提出的上诉中表示。

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奥祖伦巴于 2025 年被遣返回尼日利亚。

特朗普政府告诉大法官们，奥祖伦巴案的具体细节并不重要。它辩称，法律“不会区分枪支和黄油”。

但位于里士满的美国第四巡回上诉法院着重分析了法律中的“实质性”一词，认为奥祖伦巴为分离主义组织烹饪的六个月经历并不符合这一标准。奥祖伦巴的律师则表示，他们的当事人在寻求这份工作时并未意识到自己将要面对什么，之后又被迫违背意愿继续从事这项工作。

他的律师表示：“按照政府的解读，似乎任何与恐怖组织的互动都可能被认定为提供物质支持。”他们辩称，一位为所有前来忏悔的人听取告解的神父将被视为提供精神指导。他们还辩称，一位治疗与恐怖组织有关联的病人的医生也可能受到惩罚。

“在这种检验标准下，‘实质性’失去了所有意义——任何形式的支持，无论多么微弱、被迫或偶然，都足以构成支持，”他们告诉法官们。

预计两起案件都将在明年夏天之前做出决定。