Gabar Choli's nose swelled. His throat burned. The taste of blood lingered in his mouth from days of procedures he never consented to, yet could not stop. In June 2025, the 40-year-old Kurdish asylum seeker lay in a solitary medical cell at Port Isabel, an ICE detention facility in south Texas, bracing for guards to enter once more. The routine had become grimly familiar. Five men would storm the cell, wrestle him to concrete, shackle his wrists and ankles, and drag him to the infirmary. There, medical staff pinned him to a bed and forced a tube through his nose and down his throat, pumping nutritional liquid into his stomach. "Two guards would hold my feet, two hold my hands, one hold my head, and they would shove tubes in my nose," Choli recounted in his first public account of the experience, speaking from Canada last week. "You have 60cm of tube going through you and you just feel every centimeter of it." Choli had launched a hunger strike in March 2025, refusing food to demand better detention conditions and a resolution to his immigration case. For nearly eight months, ICE forcibly fed him. He was not alone. At the same facility, an Afghan man underwent identical treatment, both enduring what medical experts describe as torture. An investigation uncovered that since January 2025, ICE pursued court orders to subject at least 18 hunger strikers to involuntary medical procedures through force-feeding. Federal judges, in most cases, approved these requests without hearing from the detainees or their lawyers. The Trump administration has not officially acknowledged the practice, but Department of Homeland Security sources confirmed the scope of the program to investigators. Choli, a filmmaker and Kurdish independence activist who had lived in Vancouver since 2007, entered the US in 2022 seeking asylum. His asylum claim was denied in 2024, but he received protection from deportation to Iran. When Trump returned to office promising mass deportation, ICE arrested him at a February 2025 check-in and transferred him to Desert View Annex in California, where he says officials pressured him to sign a deportation order to Iran. He refused and demanded better conditions. His strike began March 24. Within days, ICE transferred him to Port Isabel for what officials called "higher level of medical care." He was placed in solitary confinement under constant observation. Almost 10 days later, ICE sought its first court order to force-feed him. Choli broke the strike, believing federal court involvement might help his case. "God opened a door for me," he thought, writing a letter to the judge requesting assistance. Three weeks passed with no response. The case was closed. Enraged, Choli stopped eating again. On May 23, ICE filed a second request for a court order to conduct involuntary medical procedures. One day later, Federal Judge Rolando Olvera issued the order without hearing from Choli. The physical damage accumulated. Choli developed swollen sinuses, a damaged esophagus, chronic stomach problems, and severe psychological trauma. After some force-feeding sessions, he was returned to solitary to choke on his own blood. "It just broke me, mentally broke me," he said gravely. "They would take me to a solitary cell and I would just choke on my blood and drink the blood from inside my throat." Medical experts who reviewed available court records expressed alarm. Dr. Chanelle Diaz, an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University who has evaluated other ICE force-feeding cases, stated: "This likely amounts to torture. I would say that it's even difficult to capture the degree of risk that he was being put at, long-term." Dr. Parveen Parmar of Physicians for Human Rights, who has provided expert testimony in other ICE force-feeding cases, emphasized a fundamental principle of medicine. "Patient autonomy is one of the core tenets of medicine," she said after reviewing Choli's records. The World Health Organization and other medical organizations recognize an individual's right to hunger strike, provided they are of sound mind. A social worker's own evaluation found Choli was "operating under his own free will." ICE's court filings offered different justifications. Officials argued that Choli's hunger strike posed "a serious threat to the security and good order" of the facility. "The public interest is served by not allowing [Choli's] attempts to manipulate the immigration system," the documents stated. These arguments appear designed to suppress such protests from spreading across the detention system. Choli had no lawyer during his detention or the force-feeding proceedings. The government provided none. Rebecca Sharpless, founding director of the University of Miami immigration clinic, emphasized the critical gap: "In my view, those proceedings shouldn't continue without the person having legal representation if they don't have it already. It makes a big difference when people understand that there are people who are fighting for them, both in terms of their legal case but also their right to make choices about their body." Dr. Benjamin Salinas and Dr. Shauna Kincheloe, doctors working for ICE, submitted declarations requesting the procedures continue. When contacted, Salinas declined to comment. Kincheloe did not respond. Judge Olvera's office declined to make him available. In a statement, ICE said it "respects an individual's right to refuse medical treatment where appropriate." The agency added that involuntary procedures occur "only pursuant to legal authority and under the direction of qualified medical professionals." The US attorney's office for southern district of Texas did not respond to detailed requests for comment. Choli was deported in January 2026, after eight months of intermittent force-feeding. Dr. Diaz noted that immigration detention itself is civil in nature, not criminal. "Detained immigrants could be released," she said. "That is always a choice. And that should be the default, not force-feeding." Author James Rodriguez: "This isn't a hidden corner of the system anymore, it's a documented practice, and the silence from federal judges is deafening."