Federal immigration officers may soon be patting people down with gloves that double as pain-delivery devices. A Department of Homeland Security procurement notice published this week confirms that Immigration and Customs Enforcement intends to spend between $10 million and $20 million equipping agents with gloves that shock anyone they touch. The purchase, first reported by the Associated Press, is large enough that it could reach most of the agency's field officers by the time deliveries wrap up in March 2027.
A Glove Built to Hurt, Not Puncture
The equipment is branded G.L.O.V.E. — shorthand for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter — and is produced by Compliant Technologies LLC, a veteran-owned firm based in Lexington, Kentucky. Worn like an ordinary patrol glove, the device is activated by a hidden switch and delivers a jolt through direct skin contact once an agent grabs hold of someone. Unlike a Taser, there are no probes and no skin-breaking prongs involved.
According to a user manual reviewed by CNN for the CTG-4 and CTG-5 models — the version ICE has selected — the device can reach up to 380 volts on contact. The company instructs officers to apply no more than two gloves to a single person at once, and to limit any individual shock to roughly 15 seconds unless the situation escalates further. Company materials claim the sensation typically forces compliance within seconds and, unlike a stun gun, leaves no burn marks and does not knock a person to the ground.
What the Company's Own Paperwork Admits
Compliant Technologies markets G.L.O.V.E. as humane and de-escalatory, and its website claims no injuries from the product have ever been documented, according to reporting by OPB. Its own instructions tell a more complicated story. A copy of the manual obtained by 404 Media shows the company acknowledging that repeated or prolonged use can factor into "sudden death," and other outlets that reviewed the same document — including Gizmodo and Truthout — describe warnings tied to spikes in blood pressure, heart rate and breathing, along with disruption to normal cardiac rhythm. The manual reportedly tells agents to steer clear of a subject's head, face, throat, chest and groin, and specifically discourages using the device on pregnant women, young children, older adults and people with serious disabilities — populations ICE agents routinely encounter during arrests. A fully charged unit is reported to sustain roughly 90 minutes of on-and-off shocks before it needs to be swapped out.
The company explicitly leaves it to individual agencies to write their own usage rules, and the manual states the gloves should not be deployed for punishment, against mere verbal defiance, or as a joke. Operators must be certified before using the device and must renew that certification every two years.
A Death Already Tied to the Technology
The danger isn't hypothetical. A pending wrongful-death lawsuit reported by the Associated Press alleges that a 43-year-old man died in 2024 at the Madison County Detention Center in Richmond, Kentucky, after being shocked 27 times with the gloves and an additional 13 times with a Taser. An internal facility review reportedly found that two of those individual glove shocks lasted 45 and 99 seconds — several times longer than the 15-second ceiling the manufacturer recommends — and concluded the extended shocks caused needless pain and raised the odds of serious medical harm.
Two additional lawsuits alleging injuries from the gloves have surfaced, including one involving a man with a preexisting heart condition who was shocked at a Las Vegas trade show and another involving someone who says he was mocked after being unnecessarily shocked in a courtroom. Both of those cases were later dismissed.
Lawmakers and Advocates Push Back
Reaction on Capitol Hill was immediate. New York Attorney General Letitia James said she was outraged by the plan and warned that any officer caught misusing the devices in her state could face criminal charges or civil liability. Several House Democrats, including Reps. Pramila Jayapal, Maxwell Frost and Delia Ramirez, argued publicly that ICE didn't need another weapon in its arsenal; Jayapal wrote on social media that the purchase "gives ICE another dangerous tool to target citizens and immigrants alike," a comment carried by the Associated Press.
The American Civil Liberties Union's Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, its deputy project director on policing, told Louisville Public Media that giving agents a device triggered almost invisibly, with a barely noticeable button press, is "a recipe for harm to the public." A former acting director of ICE separately cautioned that the tool is too easily misused against people who pose no threat, warning it could get reached for before officers attempt anything less forceful.
The Administration Makes Its Case
The Trump administration offered its first public defense of the purchase on Thursday, when White House border czar Tom Homan appeared on Fox News from Bardstown, Kentucky. Homan told viewers the gloves give agents a middle option that falls short of lethal force, arguing officers shouldn't be forced to jump straight to a firearm: "You can't just go from 0 to 100," he said, according to the Associated Press. He added that field deployment remains months away while ICE finalizes training protocols.
Standing nearby, Nelson County Jailer Justin Hall — whose facility has used the gloves for roughly four years — told reporters that, unlike a Taser, the shocks don't drop someone to the floor or leave burn marks, calling the equipment, in short, "a great tool for our facility," per reporting from The Hill. Homeland Security has otherwise stuck to boilerplate language about internal reviews ensuring compliance with existing force standards, without addressing the product by name or explaining why the agency selected it.
The Bigger Picture
The purchase lands as ICE faces sustained criticism over its tactics. Federal immigration agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis in January, and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine within days of each other in July — a pattern detailed by CNN. Advocates argue the shock gloves arrive at exactly the wrong moment for an agency already under fire for excessive force.
There's also an industry backdrop. Axon, the company behind the Taser, has moved its newest model away from "drive-stun" pain-compliance contact shocks — a feature regulators and watchdogs have criticized as prone to misuse — in favor of technology that incapacitates through muscle contraction rather than raw pain. Institute for the Prevention of In-Custody Deaths president John Peters told the Associated Press, via CBS News, that the glove's shock feels "like a bee sting" and can be an effective compliance tool when used properly — underscoring that critics and defenders alike agree on how the device works, even as they disagree sharply on whether ICE should be the one using it.
The formal no-bid solicitation could be posted within days, according to earlier CBS News reporting, putting the department on track to finalize the contract before the month is out.
