ICE Awards $16.7 Million No-Bid Contract for 6,000 Electric-Shock Gloves

ICE is about to put electrical weapons directly onto agents’ hands.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has awarded a $16.7 million no-bid contract for 6,000 pairs of gloves capable of delivering painful electric shocks through direct contact with a person’s skin.

The contract with Kentucky-based Compliant Technologies was signed Wednesday and formally posted Thursday. It includes the gloves, additional equipment and services over a six-month period.

The devices are called G.L.O.V.E.s, or Generated Low Output Voltage Emitters.

They function as ordinary patrol gloves until an officer activates their electrical mode. Once activated, an officer can deliver an electrical shock by making direct contact with someone’s exposed skin.

And the circumstances under which ICE says they could be used should set off alarm bells.

According to procurement documents, ICE envisions using the gloves while making arrests, transporting detainees and responding to disturbances around detention facilities. The agency says they could be deployed when someone is either “actively or passively resisting.”

ICE describes the devices as “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices” and argues they could give officers an alternative to more severe or lethal force.

But civil-rights advocates and Democratic lawmakers are raising a very different concern: putting an easily activated pain-compliance device directly onto the hands of immigration officers creates enormous potential for abuse.

Sixteen Democratic senators urged ICE to abandon the purchase Thursday, questioning the medical risks, constitutional implications, training requirements and oversight surrounding the devices. Senators Alex Padilla, Cory Booker and Richard Blumenthal separately demanded DHS and ICE halt their acquisition and deployment.

The manufacturer itself warns against using the devices as punishment and recommends avoiding their use against certain vulnerable populations, including pregnant women, young children and elderly or disabled people.

That makes the question of accountability impossible to ignore.

An electrical weapon built directly into an officer’s glove can be activated during physical contact in a way that may be considerably harder for witnesses to recognize than the deployment of a conventional Taser.

And now ICE has ordered thousands of them.

This story began earlier this month as a plan to spend as much as $20 million on the technology.

As of Thursday, that plan has become a $16.7 million federal contract for 6,000 electric-shock gloves.

That distinction matters.

This isn’t something ICE is merely considering anymore.

They bought them.

I’ll be watching this one closely, because the next questions are where these gloves are being deployed, when agents will begin carrying them, what restrictions actually govern their use, and whether lawmakers can stop them before they reach the field.