In an exclusive video, a hunger striker is force-fed in ICE detention — lifting the veil of secrecy on a practice condemned by medical ethicists.
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Ajay Kumar set out from India in June 2018, eventually ending up at the U.S. border in California, where he declared his intention to seek political asylum. He was then taken into the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, expecting to be released as he awaited his hearings. Instead, he languished in detention for nearly a year.
So he began a protest. In July 2019, along with three other Indian asylum-seekers, Kumar undertook a hunger strike, demanding release from ICE detention. The agency responded by transferring him to the El Paso Service Processing Center in Texas, an ICE jail operated by the firm Global Precision Systems.
With Kumar more than a month into the hunger strike, the government, using Justice Department lawyers, sought a judge’s order to force-feed him and the other three men. With the judge’s approval, contractors working at the detention center on ICE’s behalf began the process of involuntarily feeding Kumar in August 2019, 37 days since his last meal. The process was captured on video.
“I asked them to give me my freedom. If they had granted it at that time, there would have been no need for all of this,” Kumar said. “This is not humanity. This is totally against humanity.”
Historically, the federal government’s force-feeding procedures have been mired in secrecy, with even the court orders to carry it out frequently issued under seal. Video, court records, and medical records reviewed by The Intercept in the case of the El Paso detention center provide a firsthand look at how the procedure is approved and executed — including the first publicly released video of force-feeding done under the auspices of the federal government. National and international medical organizations consider force-feeding hunger strikers a transgression of medical ethics; the process has been criticized as torture by international human rights organizations.
The video, nearly one hour long, shows five detention guards in riot gear, employed by Global Precision Systems, introduce themselves to the camera in preparation for their “calculated use of force” on Kumar. The guards enter the facility infirmary, where medical personnel explain the procedure to the asylum-seeker through a translator and begin their attempts to insert a nasogastric tube. Medical officials failed to correctly insert the tube two times before successfully beginning the force-feeding.
According to ICE’s Performance-Based National Detention Standards, whenever there is a “calculated use of force,” staff are required to use a handheld camera to record the incident. The Intercept, with Kumar’s consent, requested the video through the Freedom of Information Act. After ICE refused to turn over the footage, The Intercept filed a lawsuit and ICE subsequently agreed to turn over the footage, but the agency redacted the faces and names of everyone who appears in it, aside from Kumar. (ICE declined to comment for this story and Global Precision Systems did not respond to a request for comment.)
“The process of watching this hourlong video was excruciating, knowing what Ajay was going through,” said Joanna Naples-Mitchell, research adviser for the U.S. at Physicians for Human Rights. “That was, perhaps, the most chilling thing about it: this kind of quiet, pernicious nature of the violence that was present throughout this video — and having these officers standing around him, and just this tremendous power imbalance and asymmetry between him and them.”
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