When State Power Becomes a Weapon: The Disturbing Case of ICE’s Force-Feeding Practices
Let’s cut to the core of this: What does it say about a government’s priorities when it resorts to physically restraining a man for 240 days and shoving tubes down his throat—not to heal him, but to break his will? Gabar Choli’s story isn’t just about force-feeding. It’s about how immigration enforcement has morphed into a theater of psychological warfare, where the line between custody and cruelty blurs beyond recognition.
The Human Cost of Political Theater
Choli, a Kurdish filmmaker and activist, didn’t start his hunger strike to die. He did it to demand basic dignity—something ICE apparently interpreted as a challenge to be crushed. The agency’s response—eight months of daily violence disguised as “medical care”—reveals a system that treats protest as a punishable offense. When Choli wrote an apology letter to his own body, he wasn’t just documenting suffering; he was exposing how ICE weaponizes the human body against itself. This wasn’t about saving lives. It was about dominance.
What many overlook here is the psychological toll. Force-feeding isn’t just physically traumatic; it’s a calculated assault on autonomy. Imagine being restrained, violated, and then locked in a cell choking on your own blood—all because you dared to say, “I refuse to be treated like an animal.” ICE didn’t just break Choli’s body. They tried to erase his agency. And that’s what makes this different from, say, a prison hunger strike where the state might intervene to prevent death. Here, the intervention itself was the punishment.
The Bureaucracy of Torture: How ICE Justifies the Unjustifiable
ICE’s defense—that force-feeding prevents “imminent harm”—is a legal sleight of hand. Their own court filings admit Choli’s strike threatened the “security and good order” of the facility. Translation: His protest undermined their control. Suddenly, the justification for torture isn’t about saving a life, but about maintaining institutional authority. And let’s call it what it is: Torture. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture has repeatedly condemned force-feeding in detention as cruel, inhuman treatment. Yet under the Trump administration, this practice wasn’t just revived—it was systematized.
Here’s the hypocrisy: ICE claims to act under “qualified medical professionals,” but what doctor defines restraint, nasal tubes, and solitary confinement as “care”? Dr. Chanelle Diaz’s assessment isn’t radical—it’s obvious. The agency isn’t protecting health; it’s protecting its own narrative. If Choli had been a citizen protesting Wall Street, would they have fed him through a tube? Of course not. This is about power dynamics, not medicine.
The Legal Shell Game: Courts as Enablers
The role of the judiciary here is chilling. Judge Rolando Olvera didn’t just approve Choli’s treatment; he extended it, denied him legal counsel, and effectively rubber-stamped a medicalized form of psychological torture. This isn’t justice—it’s complicity. And the 18 court orders issued for similar cases under Trump? That’s not an anomaly. It’s a policy. When human rights groups scream “torture” and the state replies with “health protocols,” the law becomes a fig leaf for brutality.
What’s particularly galling is ICE’s claim that some detainees “voluntarily” eat when shown court orders. That’s not consent. That’s coercion. Threaten someone with a court-sanctioned violation of their body, and of course they’ll “choose” to eat. It’s like saying a prisoner “chooses” to confess under torture. The system isn’t designed to resolve disputes; it’s designed to exhaust resistance.
The Bigger Picture: Immigration Enforcement as Collective Punishment
Let’s zoom out. Choli’s case didn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s part of a broader Trump-era strategy to criminalize migration through deterrence-by-trauma. From family separation to freezing tent cities, the playbook is clear: Make suffering so routine that people stop coming. Force-feeding isn’t about health—it’s about sending a message to every detainee: “We control your body. Resist, and we’ll break you.”
This raises a deeper question: Why does the U.S. treat asylum seekers like prisoners of war? Choli fled Iran after death threats for his activism. Instead of offering sanctuary, ICE treated him like a terrorist. The cognitive dissonance is staggering. America’s self-image as a refuge for the oppressed is now irreconcilable with its actual policies. And yet, this isn’t new. It’s just more visible now that the machinery of control has turned on people who can speak out—like a filmmaker who documented his ordeal before being deported.
What’s Next? The Moral Reckoning We Can’t Avoid
The danger here isn’t just past abuses—it’s normalization. If ICE’s actions under Trump face no consequences, future administrations will see this as a blueprint. Imagine if Biden or DeSantis-era Florida adopts similar tactics. The precedent is set. And while ICE’s spokesperson claims they “respect the right to refuse treatment,” their actions scream the opposite. This isn’t about medical ethics. It’s about political expediency.
Personally, I think we’re at a crossroads. Do we accept a system where protest in detention equals forced medical intervention? Or do we demand accountability for what’s essentially state-sponsored sadism? The answer will define not just immigration policy, but America’s soul. Because when a government treats hunger strikes as security threats, it doesn’t protect its people—it betrays them.
Choli’s story isn’t just about one man’s suffering. It’s a mirror. And what we see in it should terrify us all.
