ICE Wants to Buy Electric-Shock Gloves for Its Officers

The Department of Homeland Security published a notice on August 10 describing plans for ICE to spend up to $20 million on gloves that deliver painful electric shocks. The gloves are called the CTG 5 GLOVE, made by a company called Compliant Technologies. Deliveries would happen by March 2027. The notice did not say how many gloves would be bought. (The Verge)

The glove works through a switch that turns the shock on in about one second. When the glove touches someone's skin, it delivers up to 380 volts of electricity, enough to cause significant pain. The manufacturer calls it a "Conductive Distraction and De-escalation device," or CD3. (The Verge; Compliant Technologies)

The device's user guide sets clear safety limits. It says not to use more than one pair of gloves on a single person, not to shock someone for more than 15 seconds, and not to use the gloves against children, elderly people, pregnant people, 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." The key feature is that the glove does not look like a weapon. An officer wearing it appears unarmed until they touch someone and deliver the shock. (The Verge; Compliant Technologies)

DHS offered "no immediate comment" on the purchase plans and was working on a response to questions 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 "a recipe for harm to the public." (The Verge)

To see why this matters, it helps to compare the glove to something most people already know: the Taser. Tasers have been used by U.S. police for over 30 years and have built up a large body of rules, training, and legal history around them. The CTG 5 GLOVE is different in one important way: you cannot tell someone is wearing it. A Taser is a visible device carried in a holster. When it is used, people nearby can see it, and in many places it is recorded by body cameras. A glove that shocks someone on contact has no visible draw, no projectile flying through the air, and no flash that a camera or witness would catch. The company says hiding the weapon helps calm situations down. But from an accountability standpoint, it removes almost every sign that a use of force just happened.

The safety rules in the user guide also raise practical concerns. ICE operations often involve several officers and several people in close contact at the same time. The rule against using more than one pair of gloves on a single person assumes that officers can coordinate who has an active glove and who is touching whom at any given moment. In a chaotic situation, that coordination may fall apart. The 15-second limit also depends on the wearer keeping track of time and regulating themselves under stress, the exact conditions that researchers say make it harder to think clearly and judge time accurately.

The $20 million ceiling is a large amount for buying a single type of device, though without pricing per glove or a breakdown of the contract, it is hard to tell how many gloves that covers or whether it includes training, maintenance, and replacement costs.

The broader question is whether ICE's current use-of-force rules and training cover a device that does not fit into existing categories. Tasers fire from a distance and run for a fixed amount of time. The CTG 5 GLOVE requires direct contact and lets the wearer control how long and how often the shock is applied. That difference matters for policies that set rules based on weapon type, and it matters for reviews after an incident, which depend on being able to figure out what happened. The procurement notice did not say whether DHS has updated its use-of-force rules to address these differences.

The wider takeaway is that wearable, hidden, less-lethal weapons are moving from concept to regular government purchasing. The rules and oversight meant to keep them in check have not visibly kept pace.