Indian American Congressman Shri Thanedar and two other lawmakers urged the U.S. government to halt plans to equip Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers with gloves capable of delivering electric shocks.
Thanedar, Bennie G. Thompson and Lou Correa, in a letter addressed to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, warned that using gloves capable of delivering electric shocks could be abused by ICE personnel and result in injury or death.
ICE plans to spend up to $20 million to purchase thousands of “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices” for officers and agents by March 2027. The Department of Homeland Security had described the gloves as a “de-escalation device.”
Thanedar, Thompson, and Correa said in their letter that “Given ICE’s horrific record of violence against the public, the agency must not be allowed to equip its officers and agents with a device that demands both significant training for and restraint by its users.”
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“Under Trump, ICE has hired unqualified officers and agents and rushed them through training programs with reduced use of force instruction. Many of these officers and agents should not have been hired at all, much less let loose on American streets with a badge, a gun, and electric shock gloves,” the lawmakers added.
In one extreme case, a 43-year-old man died after allegedly being shocked 40 times by officers with a combination of the gloves and a Taser in a county jail in Kentucky. The man’s wife is suing authorities.
Civil rights advocates find the plans particularly alarming considering the lack of oversight shown by ICE amid President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
ICE “is putting these [gloves] in the hands of an agency that has dropped its hiring standards, its training, its background requirements in its hiring spree,” said Sarah Mehta, deputy director of government affairs in the equality division of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
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“We’re already seeing the consequences of that in lawless and violent enforcement actions in our streets,” she told The Guardian.
“What’s really terrifying is the use of them on the streets, potentially to terrify people, to create a chilling effect. But what’s also scary is what [their] uses will be where we can’t see them. We don’t know how they’re going to be used in places like Fort Bliss,” she added, referring to the largest migrant detention facility in the U.S., which has seen allegations of abuse. Mehta further said of the gloves: “There are no circumstances where we think their use is appropriate.”
The device carries the brand name G.L.O.V.E (Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter) and is manufactured by Compliant Technologies, a company owned by military veterans and based in Lexington, Kentucky. It is known as a conductive distraction and de-escalation device and can only be sold to certain verified entities, such as law enforcement, corrections, security, military, and emergency medical services (EMS) personnel, and requires training. It delivers an electric shock when the user pushes a button on the glove and touches or grips bare skin.