--- title: Force-Fed by ICE | daily.dev description: Kurdish film-maker and asylum seeker Gabar Choli describes being force-fed by ICE for nearly eight months at the Port Isabel detention center in Texas after... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/force-fed-by-ice-qflwpghfu twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Force-Fed by ICE | daily.dev og:description: Kurdish film-maker and asylum seeker Gabar Choli describes being force-fed by ICE for nearly eight months at the Port Isabel detention center in Texas after... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/force-fed-by-ice-qflwpghfu og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/QFLwpGHFu.png og:image:alt: Force-Fed by ICE og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Force-Fed by ICE **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 14 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Kurdish film-maker and asylum seeker Gabar Choli describes being force-fed by ICE for nearly eight months at the Port Isabel detention center in Texas after going on hunger strike to protest conditions and demand fair treatment. Guards would restrain him twice daily while medical staff inserted nasogastric tubes, causing injuries including a torn nose, damaged esophagus, rib injuries, and lasting physical and psychological harm. A Guardian investigation found ICE obtained court orders to force-feed at least 18 hunger strikers between January 2025 and August 2026. Medical experts describe the practice as torture, and Choli had no legal representation throughout the proceedings. He was deported to Canada in January and continues to suffer physical and mental health consequences. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 30 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-08-11). **TL;DR:** Commenters are overwhelmingly horrified by the force-feeding practices described, drawing comparisons to historical atrocities and calling the treatment torture; a small minority questions the policy alternatives or defends enforcement actions. **Sentiment:** 5% positive · 20% mixed · 75% skeptical **The pushback** - Medical experts and commenters characterize force-feeding as torture, causing documented physical injuries including torn nasal tissue, esophageal damage, and rib injuries. - Detainees reportedly have no legal representation during court proceedings authorizing force-feeding. - Detention conditions allegedly include forced labor for minimal pay, extensive solitary confinement used as retaliation, and documented deaths from medical neglect. - Accountability for those responsible is seen as extremely unlikely given the current political environment. **By community** - hackernews (skeptical): Commenters are largely appalled by the described treatment, framing it as torture and drawing historical parallels, though a few dissenting voices question policy alternatives or dismiss the criticism entirely. **Hottest debate:** Whether force-feeding hunger strikers constitutes torture and a human rights violation, or is simply a standard medical duty to preserve life regardless of the patient's wishes. **Open questions** - What policy should govern hunger strikes in immigration detention if neither letting detainees die nor force-feeding them is acceptable? - Will any officials or contractors responsible for these conditions face legal accountability? - What oversight mechanisms exist to prevent abuse of court orders authorizing force-feeding? **Highlights** > I think every American should also read the ACLU's report (Resistance, Retaliation, Repression: Two Years in California Immigration Detention). https://www.aclunorcal.org/publications/resistance-retaliati... Some of the issues it highlighted: - forced labor in order to afford to eat. The $1/day "Voluntary Work Program" is the only way to get enough food to live. And if you refuse to work or try to protest, ICE doesn't have to give an excuse to send you into solitary confinement. CoreCivic sells this labor to companies - extensive use of solitary confinement often for "minor disciplinary infractions or as a form of retaliation for participating in hunger strikes or for submitting complaints" - dozens of documented deaths from forced labor and medical neglect All of these conditions have only gotten much worse. > — [culi on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49245338) > > I hope to see the day the perpetrators will punished. This is unfortunately incredibly unlikely, at least when it comes to the people who are really responsible. Some of the foot soldiers working in these prisons might get some punishment assuming we in the US still live in a functioning democracy (IMO until after the midterms happen, this is actually an open question) and if power is able to shift away from the current administration, but the people really responsible for this are above federal law, which is a thing we allow in the US. They will all be mass pardoned by Trump before he leaves office. > — [georgemcbay on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49245948) > This is essentially a health-care issue; it is not an issue of torture or human rights or discretion on DHS' part. If EMTs or a hospital found someone who is not eating, they would feed them. They would feed them medically with any coercion required to keep them alive. Uncooperative patients can be legally restrained, compelled, and coerced into life-sustaining medical treatment; food and water are at the top of this list. The bottom line is that food and water are not "extraordinary means" of life support. They are always considered ordinary means. It is not optional for a health care professional to feed and hydrate a patient. It is their solemn duty to the state. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Force-feeding_(suffr... I once stumbled across an extraordinary image of a suffragette being force-fed in her prison cell. I am not sure if it's a photograph, a drawing, or a retouching, but it apparently depicts a very real and routine practice of dealing with hunger-striking activists a century ago. Now that we are on the right side of history, we see suffragettes as the righteous victors, and so would we rather that the government had allowed them to die from hunger-strikes, in contrast to ordinary life support for medical patients? It is also important to note that labor can be compelled from prisoners in the United States. Slavery was not abolished here after the Civil War, it was redefined! The XIII Amendment specifically states the circumstances for legal slavery, and chief among them is for prisoners. All the criminals today who willfully and voluntarily commit crimes? They are offering themselves as slaves to the state. They are recapitulating the lives, often lives of their ancestors, who were unwilling slaves, by sacrificing their freedom to become voluntary enslaved by the state in prison. Therefore, enslavement of prisoners is routine, widespread, safe, and legal in the United States, and this won't exclude illegal, criminal aliens. > — [ButlerianJihad on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49247304) > To expand on another comment under you, which was "Maybe take a few steps farther back"... I took that to mean proper healthcare and fair treatment for all people in (any kind of) detention, which would probably prevent people from wanting to strike in the first place. That or not even detaining them in the first place (especially for prolonged periods) if it's not for a serious offense and they're not a threat to anyone. > — [ranger\_danger on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49247821) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49245071) · 59 points · 30 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Google Broke Its Promise to Me. 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