U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, is looking to allocate up to $20 million for gloves capable of delivering electric shocks to those it arrests or holds. Kentucky-based Compliant Technologies makes the gloves, which go by the name GLOVE, short for "generated low output voltage emitter."
The company says a touch to the skin sends quick, uncomfortable electrical pulses that distract someone. The purchase notice went out this week, and the government intends to publish a notice of a no-bid contract - skipping competitive bidding - on August 14. ICE would issue the gloves to deportation officers and agents in its Homeland Security Investigations unit.
The plan comes at a moment of record enforcement.
Deportations have exceeded 590,000 since President Trump assumed office in January 2025. Additionally, ICE has arrested about 550,000 individuals who are either alleged to be in the U.S. without legal status or are considered potentially deportable.
A senior Department of Homeland Security official said July's approximately 51,000 arrests were the most ever recorded in a single month.
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Hard-liners in the administration are pressing Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to go further. The enforcement push has also included violent incidents. During stepped-up operations since last year, agents have clashed physically with migrants and protesters, and authorities have shot and killed several people, including two U.S. citizens in Minnesota in January.
In July, ICE agents killed two immigrant men: one a Mexican who had lived in Houston for years and the other a Colombian in Maine.
Civil rights groups, Democratic legislators, and a few Republicans have criticized the glove plan, saying ICE has been overly aggressive. Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, a civil rights advocate, said the agency has been "too quick to use force" and warned that a small button on a glove could cause pain without people nearby realizing it.
"Now they might be equipped with a device that allows them to deliver an electric shock with their hands by pushing a small button, in a move that might be imperceptible to those watching," Borchetta said. "Giving immigration agents a concealed means of delivering terrible pain is a recipe for more harm to the public and less accountability."
Compliant Technologies, the glove maker, declined to comment. The Department of Homeland Security said it constantly reviews whether officers have the tools they need for safe arrests and removal of "criminal illegal aliens," and it carefully checks whether new technology meets law enforcement standards.
The glove deal is not the only contract drawing questions. Another no-bid contract awards Our Rescue up to $244 million for legal representation of unaccompanied immigrant children facing deportation.
Our Rescue's founder, Tim Ballard, is a former DHS employee who left in 2023 amid sexual misconduct allegations. He denied the allegations and was not criminally charged.
Taxpayers are on the hook for the $20 million glove deal and the children's representation contract.
The question now is how much oversight comes with these new tools. When an agent can deliver a shock with what looks like an ordinary glove, the public needs to know when and why agents use it. Without that visibility, accountability gets even harder to measure than the price tag.
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