ICE Is Buying Up to $20 Million Worth of Electric Shock Gloves

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is buying up to $20 million worth of gloves that can allow agents to issue a painful electric shock to force people into compliance, granting the agency yet another tool as it extrajudicially abducts and kills people across the country.

According to a notice posted by the Department of Homeland Security on Monday, ICE is planning to spend between $10 million and $20 million on the gloves. The product is made by a Kentucky-based company known as Compliant Technologies LLC, and is called the “Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter,” or the G.L.O.V.E.

The devices look like a normal pair of work gloves and are described by the company as an “invisible partner” and “force multiplier” for law enforcement. When the electric shock function is turned on with a button on the back of the glove, an officer can then administer a shock by laying hands on the subject’s bare skin.

This can force a subject to comply within seconds, Compliant Technologies claims.

“It’s immediate and sharp, and it will distract you. I call it like a bee sting,” Institute for the Prevention of In-Custody Deaths President John Peters told The Associated Press. Peters’s organization has been studying the device. “If the officer is getting any type of resistance from the person, this is certainly an effective tool.”

Peters says that it would offer a “great advantage” to officers who are weaker, and can be used to force ICE subjects to exit homes or vehicles or to move in and out of ICE detention centers.

Civil liberties advocates have raised alarm about the devices, noting ICE agents’ extensive abuses amid the Trump administration’s immigration raids across the U.S.

“ICE spent the last year showing this country they are too quick to use force. Now they will be able to deploy electric shocks with the slight push of a button that maybe nobody else can see them do,” said Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, an expert on policing at the American Civil Liberties Union, to AP. “Introducing gloves that can so easily be used to deliver terrible pain in encounters is a recipe for harm to the public.”

“ICE has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to use aggressive and even deadly force against immigrants and U.S. citizens alike,” said Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, in a statement. “Arming poorly trained agents with electric shock gloves to inflict pain on our neighbors is disgusting.”

The product’s user manual warns that use of the product can “increase the affects [sic] that can cause sudden death,” like disruptions to heart rhythm, blood pressure, and blood chemistry.

The company warns that it should not be used on particularly vulnerable populations like the elderly, children, and pregnant people. The company also says that it should not be used as punishment or on people merely expressing verbal defiance or belligerence, and that it should not be applied for more than 15 seconds.

The purchase grants another tool to ICE agents, whose agency already faces scrutiny for abuses. ICE agents have shot and killed at least 10 people since the start of the second Trump administration, while at least 54 people have been killed in ICE custody since 2025, as deaths in detention have reached record highs.

Meanwhile, the purchase is a drop in the bucket for the agency after Congress granted another $70 billion to ICE and Border Patrol earlier this year, on top of another $75 billion infusion last year.