Shocking new video captures for the first time officials from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) force-feeding a migrant in the midst of a hunger strike, a highly controversial practice condemned by medical and human rights groups as unethical and torturous.
ICE has used the practice since at least 2012, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, but the clip, obtained by The Intercept, shows the procedure in graphic detail for the first time to the public.
In the video, two nurses try three times before successfully inserting a feeding tube through the nose of Ajay Kumar, who left India in 2018 seeking political asylum.
Elsewhere in the footage, a guard offered Mr Kumar a final chance to drink a protein supplement, to which he replied, “You guys know the only thing I want: my freedom,” after which point armoured officers restrain the political activist, as he arches his back in pain and blood comes through his mouth and nose.
The migrant left India in June of 2018 and presented himself at the California border seeking asylum.
Though immigration detention is technically non-criminal, and some migrants are released into the US as their asylum cases proceed, Mr Kumar was held for about a year in ICE detention in California, where he says he was mistreated and retaliated against when he requested food that hadn’t been cross-contaminated with beef, which would’ve gone against his Hindu faith.
By July 2019, he and three other asylum-seekers went on a hunger strike that lasted over a month. Mr Kumar lost over 20 pounds.
As his condition deteriorated, he was moved to an ICE facility in El Paso where the force-feeding began, according to court records, a process that continued over the course of three weeks between August and September of 2019.
Eventually, both officials and outside observers began to criticise Mr Kumar’s treatment.
“It is the duty of the government to provide adequate medical care, not just to keep [Kumar] alive,” federal judge Frank Montalvo wrote of Mr Kumar’s care.
“Every professional society that has ever spoken on this issue has stated, clearly, that force-feeding is unethical,” Dr Parveen Parmar, a professor at the University of Southern California who reviewed Kumar’s medical records at the request of his attorneys, told Texas Monthly at the time.
“Second, my review of all of Mr Kumar’s care in ICE custody showed a consistent lack of adherence to a basic standard of care which was so shocking, it has haunted me since.”
ICE agreed to release Mr Kumar in September of 2019, following the 76-day hunger strike.
In 2018, there were at least 25 hunger strikes in ICE detention, six of which resulted in force-feeding, according to The Intercept. The following year, there were 40 strikes.
According to detention guidelines, ICE is required to videotape instances of “calculated use of force,” but the agency declined to turn over such tapes to The Intercept’s Freedom of Information Act request. The agency only relented once the outlet initiated a lawsuit, releasing a redacted video.
The Independent has contacted ICE for comment.
Force-feeding is considered an unethical response to a hunger strike.
“As ethical guidelines for medical professionals have long recognized, participation in a hunger strike is not a medical condition, but rather, a political decision by the hunger striker, and people contemplating or undertaking a hunger strike are entitled to a relationship of trust with the health professionals providing their care,” Physicians for Human Rights writes.
The United Nations has said that the US’s use of force-feeding in such situations could amount to a violation of the Convention Against Torture.
Force-feeding is used in ICE detention, federal prisons, state jails, as well as the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison.
