Gabar Choli tells of how, for months, he was shackled, pinned and forcibly fed – and the physical and emotional scars the ordeal has left

In June 2025, a sluggish and thin Gabar Choli, with sunken temples and bones visible under his skin, braced himself for the immigration detention center guards to charge into his cell once again.

Choli was in a solitary confinement medical cell inside the Port Isabel service processing center, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in south Texas where immigrants arrested in Donald Trump’s anti-immigration crackdown are detained.

Exclusive: Film-maker Gabar Choli describes how he endured coercive treatment over eight months in detention in Texas

A Kurdish man who was force-fed over the course of eight months while on hunger strike in US immigration detention has spoken out about it for the first time, describing how much the process harmed him physically and psychologically.

Gabar Choli, a film-maker and activist now living in Canada after being deported, described how he endured the coercive treatment – a practice widely considered torture by international human rights groups – often twice a day after being detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when his asylum application was denied.