Democrats have erupted over the Trump administration’s plans to outfit U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers with gloves that are capable of delivering an electric shock.
The plan was meant to give federal immigration officers a nonlethal way to deal with violent agitators and illegal immigrants who interfere with law enforcement operations following four fatal shootings during such encounters since January.
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However, Democrats said the gloves are only a step further in the direction of cruelty.
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) called the revelation “horrifying and infuriating” in a statement posted online.
“This rogue agency uses cruel tactics like these and hasn’t demonstrated any willingness to de-escalate — and the Trump Administration refuses to rein them in,” Rosen wrote. “I’ll continue opposing additional funding for ICE until it is held accountable.”
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) blamed lawmakers in Congress who gave the Department of Homeland Security tens of billions of dollars in President Donald Trump’s first 18 months for making the purchase possible in the first place.
“Senate Republicans had the opportunity to rein in ICE and CBP, they refused,” Schiff wrote in a post to X. “Instead they handed DHS BILLIONS more of your tax dollars without any constraint after the shooting and killing individuals in the streets.”
The Associated Press was first to report on Tuesday that the Department of Homeland Security planned to spend up to $20 million for Generated Low-Output Voltage Emitters, known as GLOVEs, by next March.
The shock gloves are produced by Compliant Technologies LLC, based in Lexington, Kentucky. Compliant described the gloves as wearable devices rather than a weapon. The gloves deliver an electrical pulse when they make direct contact with skin.
The federal department touted the gloves as a way to de-escalate tense situations for personnel at ICE, including deportation officers and homeland security investigators.
White House border czar Tom Homan described the gloves in an interview on Fox News on Thursday as another way to “help someone get compliant when they are not.”
“You can’t just go from 0 to 100, right, and the first thing you go for is lethal force,” Homan told Fox News.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, feared that arming ICE with the shock gloves would make the public less safe.
“ICE has targeted legal observers, protestors, and just ordinary people on their way to work or to drop their kid off at school,” Jayapal wrote in a post. “This won’t make anyone safer and in fact just gives ICE another dangerous tool to target citizens and immigrants alike.”
Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) said the gloves would only add to the ways that ICE was “assaulting people and shooting people in the streets.”
Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL) claimed that the gloves had the “power to inflict ‘sudden’ death.”
“DHS keeps using its TRILLIONS of dollars to amass tools to terrorize our communities and harm our residents. The cruelty of the Trump administration knows no bounds,” Ramirez wrote in a post. “Congress must act! Let’s pass my Melt ICE Act and dismantle DHS.”
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Immigrant rights organization, Voto Latino, sided with Democrats such as Ramirez and predicted the gloves would have serious ramifications.
“These devices have been linked to cardiac arrest and death, and have too often been used for compliance rather than genuine defense, shocking people who are already restrained or pose no threat,” Voto Latino Executive Director Beatriz Lopez said in a statement. “Make no mistake: this new tool will not protect our communities. Innocent people will get hurt.”
