August 10, 2026
Tube Rage in Detention
Force-Fed by ICE
Readers recoil at a brutal ICE force-feeding story as the comments turn furious and conflicted
TLDR: The big news is that a detained asylum seeker says ICE force-fed him for months during a hunger strike, in a process widely condemned by human rights groups. Readers were furious, but the comments also erupted into a bleak argument over whether the state should ever let a hunger striker die.
The article itself is grim enough to make readers wince: Kurdish asylum seeker Gabar Choli says he was repeatedly pinned down, shackled, and force-fed through a tube while held in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Texas after a months-long hunger strike. He told the Guardian the ordeal "broke" him, leaving physical injuries and deep mental scars. But in the comment section, the reaction wasn’t just shock — it was a full-blown moral meltdown.
One of the loudest moods was pure horror. The very first warning basically waved a red flag — horrific details inside — and others piled on with outrage, calling the treatment monstrous and saying they hope those responsible are punished. Another commenter dragged in an American Civil Liberties Union report, turning the thread into a broader indictment of immigration detention in America.
But then came the messy debate: if someone in custody goes on hunger strike, what is the government supposed to do? Let them die, or force-feed them? One commenter admitted they were genuinely torn, and that cracked open the thread’s hottest tension — outrage at the reported treatment versus uneasy questions about what the alternative should be. And then there was the darkest, most biting line of the bunch: a commenter basically sneered that in a “free country,” you don’t even get to choose when you die. No memes, no comic relief, really — just gallows humor, anger, and a comment section staring straight into an ugly question it clearly did not want to answer.
Key Points
- •The article reports that Kurdish asylum seeker Gabar Choli said he was repeatedly force-fed while on hunger strike at ICE’s Port Isabel detention center in Texas.
- •According to the Guardian’s investigation, Choli was intermittently force-fed for nearly eight months, from late May 2025 until his deportation in January.
- •Choli said guards restrained him and medical staff inserted a feeding tube through his nose and throat, causing bleeding, pain, and ongoing physical and psychological harm.
- •The article says another hunger striker, an Afghan man, was also force-fed at the same ICE facility.
- •The Guardian reports that while the Trump administration had not officially acknowledged force-feeding in immigration jails, court orders were used in plans affecting at least 10 hunger strikers since January 2025.