A government document from inside ICE confirms that the Trump administration forced medical treatment on at least one immigration detainee who was refusing to eat. This is the first confirmed case of its kind since Donald Trump began his second term. The document was published online in February 2026 and reviewed by The Guardian (The Guardian).

ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that detains people who are in the United States without legal permission. The document comes from ICE's medical branch, called the ICE Health Service Corps (IHSC). It says that an unnamed detainee who started a hunger strike between October and December 2025 "was subject to force feeding, hydration, or forced urinary catheterization, or involuntary blood draws." The document does not say which of those measures were used on this person. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not answer The Guardian's questions about what kind of forced treatment was given (The Guardian).

A hunger strike is when someone refuses to eat as a form of protest. People in detention sometimes use hunger strikes because they have very few other ways to make their voices heard. As of February 11, 2026, the same IHSC document recorded seven patients on hunger strike. The report also projected a budget of $168,928.01 for the 2026 fiscal year based on costs from the prior year, with $4,504.75 set aside specifically for outside medical care of hunger strike patients (The Guardian).

ICE's own detention standards for 2025 and 2026 require staff to use a special "Hunger Strike Form" to track what detainees eat and drink, and to document any plan for forced medical treatment. A separate watchdog agency, the DHS Office of Inspector General, had already noted hunger strike activity at an ICE facility in Buffalo during a surprise inspection in June 2025 (DHS OIG).

The forced treatment news comes as hunger strikes appear to be increasing across the detention system. At least 300 detainees started a hunger and labor strike at the Delaney Hall detention center in New Jersey from May to June 2026. Advocates said those detainees stopped their strike after facing retaliation. In a separate case, lawyers with the Immigrant Defenders Law Center said hunger strikers at the Adelanto detention center in California were zip-tied, threatened with teargas, placed in solitary confinement, or moved to other ICE facilities. Sarah Houston, a managing attorney at ImmDef, said ICE officials denied that her clients at Adelanto were actually refusing food (The Guardian).

Trump officials have repeatedly denied that detainees are refusing food to protest dirty conditions and poor medical care in detention facilities. The government's position is that the hunger strikes are not happening the way advocates describe them. But the IHSC document's own records show both that hunger strikes are taking place and that forced medical treatment has been used (The Guardian).

Eunice Cho, an immigrant rights attorney, called the revelation shocking. Cho helped write a 2021 ACLU report that documented medical complications from forced treatment of hunger strikers in ICE detention. The World Medical Association, an international group that sets ethical standards for doctors, has long said that forcible feeding is never ethically acceptable. That principle has shaped medical debate over the practice, but it does not legally bind U.S. immigration authorities (The Guardian).

The fact that this document was made public is unusual on its own. Budget documents from ICE's medical branch are not normally released, and this one provides the first official confirmation that forced treatment has been used on a hunger striker during Trump's second term. The document lists specific interventions (force feeding, hydration, forced urinary catheterization, involuntary blood draws), giving advocates and legal observers a concrete basis to examine the administration's detention medical practices in a way that public statements alone never allowed.

The broader picture is one of growing tension between detained immigrants, who are refusing food as the only leverage they have, and an administration that has both ramped up enforcement and dismissed the protesters' complaints. The Delaney Hall and Adelanto cases show the range of responses detainees have faced: retaliation at one facility, physical restraint and solitary confinement at another. The IHSC document now confirms that medical coercion has been used as well. With DHS declining to say which specific interventions were applied, and with budget figures suggesting ICE expects hunger strikes to continue through 2026, the gap between what officials say publicly and what their own records show is likely to draw more legal and advocacy attention in the months ahead.