This paper presents a combined experimental-modeling effort to interpret the coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviors of the freezing soil, where an unconfined, fully saturated clay is frozen due to a temperature gradient. By leveraging the rich experimental data from the microCT images and the measurements taken during the freezing process, we examine not only how the growth of ice induces volumetric changes of the soil in the fully saturated specimen but also how the presence and propagation of the freezing fringe front may evolve the anisotropy of the effective media of the soil-ice mixture that cannot be otherwise captured phenomenologically in the isotropic saturation-dependent critical state models for plasticity. The resultant model is not only helpful for providing a qualitative description of how freezing affects the volumetric responses of the clayey material, but also provide a mean to generate more precise predictions for the heaving due to the freezing of the ground.