Immigration and Customs Enforcement has agreed to a $16.7 million deal for 6,000 pairs of gloves capable of delivering painful electric shocks, stating that officers will use them to subdue uncooperative detainees and protesters. The purchase went ahead despite pushback from civil rights advocates and Democratic members of Congress, who warned that ICE officers cannot be trusted to deploy the equipment appropriately. A notice on a federal database published Thursday revealed ICE signed a no-bid contract with Kentucky-based firm Compliant Technologies LLC, which produces the items.
The transaction covers securing 6,000 devices, as well as support equipment and services, over the next six months. Civil rights advocates have said ICE officers already face criticism for their use of force with little oversight or accountability while enforcing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. ICE published the notice hours after a group of U.S. senators, led by Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, urged the agency to cancel its plan to buy the gloves.
In a letter to ICE's acting director Thursday, Cortez Masto and 15 of her colleagues in the Democratic caucus questioned ICE's need for the devices. The senators were the latest to express opposition to the plan, which became public this month when ICE published a notice outlining its intent to purchase thousands of “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices” for officers and investigators. The devices are normal patrol gloves until an officer presses a button to activate the electrical mode.
They must be applied directly to someone’s skin to produce a shock that causes pain, which is promoted as a way to gain compliance from people who are resisting. They have been used by some local jails and police departments in recent years. ICE's notice said officers would use them in “high-tension environments,” including while making arrests, transporting combative detainees and responding to civil disturbances outside detention facilities.
It said that the shocks would help “maintain control over inmates and prevent aggression or escape attempts,” allow officers to handcuff people hiding their hands, and assist in crowd control. The goal would be to avoid using “more severe force,” including firearms. The notice said the gloves would be used with “approved policy, training, and accountability standards,” but it did not elaborate.
Cortez Masto and the other senators said in their letter that the device “presents substantial risks if deployed during civil arrests — even more so if it is deployed without clear limits, appropriate training, and comprehensive oversight.” They said ICE must make public details about how officers will be trained and how use of the gloves will be documented and reviewed internally to avoid misuse. ICE's parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, reacted defiantly to critics of the purchase.
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