ICE to Spend Up to $20 Million on Electric-Shock Gloves for Officers and Agents
The Department of Homeland Security published a procurement notice on August 10 outlining plans for ICE to spend up to $20 million equipping officers and agents with gloves that deliver painful electric shocks. The notice specifies the CTG 5 GLOVE, manufactured by Compliant Technologies, with deliveries slated by March 2027. The quantity of gloves was not specified. (The Verge)
The CTG 5 GLOVE is classified by its manufacturer as a Conductive Distraction and De-escalation device, or CD3. Compliant Technologies markets it under the product line name "Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter." The glove's shock function is activated via a switch and can be engaged in approximately one second. Upon skin contact, it delivers a maximum voltage of up to 380V. (The Verge; Compliant Technologies)
The device's user guide imposes explicit operational constraints. It warns against using more than one pair of gloves on a single individual, against shocking a person for more than 15 seconds, and against deploying the device against children, elderly individuals, pregnant individuals, or disabled people. (The Verge)
Compliant Technologies describes the CTG 5 GLOVE as an "invisible partner" and markets it as "The New Protocol in Peace Keeping," emphasizing that the glove is not immediately identifiable as a weapon. That concealment of function is central to the product's design rationale: an officer wearing the glove appears unarmed to a subject until contact is made and the shock is delivered. (The Verge; Compliant Technologies)
DHS offered "no immediate comment" on the purchase plans and was working on a response to press inquiries from the Associated Press. (The Verge)
The ACLU has publicly criticized the plan. Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, the organization's deputy project director on policing, called the ICE electric-glove purchase plan "a recipe for harm to the public." (The Verge)
The procurement sits at an uncomfortable intersection of law-enforcement tooling and accountability mechanisms that were not designed with concealed, body-worn shock devices in mind. Conducted electrical weapons, commonly known by the brand name Taser, have been deployed by U.S. law enforcement for over three decades and have accumulated a substantial body of use-of-force policy, training requirements, and litigation history. The CTG 5 GLOVE differs in a way that matters for oversight: it is functionally invisible as a weapon. A Taser is a visible device carried in a holster; its deployment is observable and, in many jurisdictions, recorded by body-worn cameras. A glove that delivers a 380V shock on contact has no visible draw, no projectile, and no telltale arcing that a nearby camera or witness would catch. The manufacturer frames this concealment as a de-escalation feature, but from an accountability standpoint it removes nearly every external cue that a use-of-force event has occurred.
The user-guide constraints themselves raise practical questions about real-world deployment. ICE enforcement operations frequently involve physical encounters with multiple agents and subjects in close quarters. The prohibition on using more than one pair of gloves on a single individual presupposes coordination and awareness among agents about who is wearing an energized glove and who is making contact with a given subject at a given moment. In a chaotic apprehension scenario, that coordination may not hold. Similarly, the 15-second exposure limit relies on the wearer's situational awareness and self-regulation under stress, the same cognitive conditions that use-of-force researchers have long identified as degrading judgment and time perception.
The $20 million ceiling is substantial for a single-device category procurement, though without unit pricing or contract line items it is difficult to assess how many gloves that figure represents or what training, maintenance, and replacement costs are bundled into it.
The broader question is whether existing ICE use-of-force policies and training protocols account for a device that does not fit established categories. Tasers are projectile-based, distance-deployed weapons with a defined cycle time. The CTG 5 GLOVE is a contact weapon with continuous operator control over duration and frequency of application. That distinction matters for policy frameworks that calibrate permissible force by weapon type, and it matters for after-action review processes that depend on being able to identify and reconstruct a use-of-force event. Whether DHS has updated or plans to update its use-of-force directives to address these characteristics was not addressed in the procurement notice.
For technologists who track government procurement of emerging enforcement tools, the CTG 5 GLOVE contract is worth noting less for its technical novelty than for what it signals about the category. Wearable, concealed, less-lethal force devices are moving from concept to standardized government purchasing. The policy and oversight infrastructure has not visibly moved with them.
