Context:

A Kurdish film-maker, Gabar Choli, recounts nearly eight months of forced nasogastric feeding at a Texas ICE detention center after a hunger strike over detention conditions and deportation outcomes. The accounts describe shackling, wrestling, and repeated tube insertions that caused severe physical and psychological harm, with court filings and medical officials involved in authorizing involuntary treatment. Advocates and doctors call the practice torture or inhumane, while authorities argue such measures are legally authorized to protect health and security. Choli was eventually deported to Canada in January, but his testimony raises broader questions about hunger-strike protests inside immigration detention and the appropriateness of force-feeding in civil detention settings. The case highlights systemic tensions between detainee rights, medical ethics, and the use of court orders to compel treatment.

Dive Deeper:

• Choli, a 40-year-old Kurdish asylum seeker and filmmaker, was detained in Port Isabel, Texas, after hunger striking for better conditions and to press for release or deportation; he was deported to Canada in January following the eight-month period of force-feeding.

• Guardian records and court documents show he was intermittently force-fed from late May 2025, with two guards, two hands, and one head restrained as medical staff inserted a feeding tube through his nose, resulting in painful injuries and lasting physical harm.

• The force-feeding occurred despite limited representation for Choli; he did not have a lawyer during detention, and courts approved involuntary feeding orders in at least two proceedings, including an initial order about ten days after his transfer to Port Isabel and a second one about three weeks later.

• Medical and human-rights experts describe the procedure as brutal and potentially torturous, noting symptoms such as swollen sinuses, damaged esophagus, stomach problems, and psychological torment, while emphasizing patient autonomy in hunger strikes.

• ICE and U.S. attorneys argued that continued force-feeding was justified to prevent serious harm and protect facility security, citing legal authority and medical direction, even as some clinicians questioned the necessity and called for detainee release as a default option.

• Choli’s account includes extreme episodes, such as a guard tearing the nose from the inside during a tube insertion, episodes of choking and bleeding, and a routine that stretched to months with frequent, often twice-daily treatments.

• Experts and advocates warn that such force-feeding practices undermine medical ethics, equate to torture in some analyses, and signal a broader pattern of how hunger strikes are managed within civil detention, raising questions about due process, detainee rights, and accountability.