ICE to spend up to $20M on electric shock gloves
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
ICE agents walk a detainee out of the Ventura County Government Center in California on July 27. Photo: Blake Fagan / AFP via Getty Images
Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to begin using electric shock gloves designed to cause pain and disrupt a person's ability to react.
The big picture: The gloves could give ICE officers a new way to use force as their tactics face intense scrutiny after several deaths and violent encounters.
Driving the news: ICE plans to spend between $10 and $20 million on the gloves and issue them to Homeland Security Investigations and Enforcement Removal Operations officers and agents, per a Department of Homeland Security notice published Monday.
- The Associated Press was first to report the plan.
- The CTG-5 Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, or G.L.O.V.E, is produced by Kentucky-based Compliant Technologies, which declined to comment.
- The device's user guide says it should not be used against verbal defiance or as a form of punishment. The manufacturer advises against using it on the elderly, children, pregnant women and those with serious disabilities.
Friction point: Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, ACLU's deputy director on policing, raised concerns about how immigration agents could use the device.
- "ICE spent the last year showing this country that they are willing to disregard the law and are too quick to use force, with devastating and at times fatal consequences for citizens and noncitizens alike," she said in a statement.
- She noted officers could use the gloves to deliver shocks covertly, "a recipe for more harm to the public and less accountability."
The fine print: The gloves are meant to stop detainees or subjects from "performing coordinated muscle movement" by causing pain through direct skin contact.
- G.L.O.V.E. users must undergo training for certification every two years, according to the manufacturer's user manual.
- A DHS spokesperson said in a statement that officers are "highly trained in de-escalation tactics and regularly receive ongoing use of force training."
Worth noting: ICE is also expanding its use of body cameras after the agency's fatal shootings and other use-of-force incidents.
Zoom out: In the background, millions of people are living in immigration limbo — colliding with the reality of ramped-up enforcement at airports, application interviews and beyond, Axios' Brittany Gibson reports.
- ICE has been infused with billions from Republican lawmakers as the administration maintains lofty goals to remove unauthorized immigrants from the U.S.
