The Government Wants to Buy Electric-Shock Gloves for ICE Officers. Here's What's Going On.
The Trump administration plans to spend between $10 million and $20 million buying electric-shock gloves for U.S. immigration officers, according to a government notice posted online. The notice, from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), says the gloves would go to ICE agents — the officers who enforce immigration laws and carry out deportations. The agency expects to make the purchase by the end of March 2027 (Al Jazeera; DHS procurement record).
ICE plans to buy thousands of the gloves, The Guardian reported on August 11, 2026. The maximum amount the government might spend, $20 million, is roughly equivalent to £15 million (The Guardian). Axios reported the next day that the gloves are "designed to cause pain and disrupt a person's ability to resist" (Axios).
The device is called the CT-G5 G.L.O.V.E., made by a company called Compliant Technologies (Al Jazeera; The Hill; Compliant Technologies). According to a user manual, the gloves can deliver up to 380 volts of electricity. That level of shock "inhibits/distracts the subject from performing coordinated muscle movement," meaning it makes it hard for a person to control their body (Al Jazeera).
DHS said the gloves would be used for "distraction and de-escalation" — that is, to interrupt a tense situation and try to keep it from getting worse. The same gloves are already used by some jails and police departments (Al Jazeera).
Compliant Technologies founder and CEO Jeff Niklaus declined to comment, saying, "Unfortunately, we are unable to speak on this subject" (Al Jazeera). The company's own guidelines say the gloves should not be used on "higher risk" people, including the elderly, small children, pregnant people, and those with severe disabilities. The company also requires officers to take a training course and get recertified every two years (Al Jazeera).
The Associated Press reported that the plan drew outrage and fears of misuse (Associated Press). The National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy group, released a statement on August 12, 2026, calling the purchase a step toward more violence against vulnerable communities. NILC President Kica Mantos said, "Arming poorly trained agents with electric shock gloves to inflict pain on our neighbors is disgusting and barbaric" (Al Jazeera; NILC).
The purchase is set up as a no-bid contract. That means the government did not ask multiple companies to compete for the deal by offering better prices or products. For an agency whose work already draws a lot of legal and political attention, skipping the competitive process on a new kind of weapon will likely attract scrutiny from Congress and civil liberties groups. A no-bid contract also means the public gets less information about why the government chose this product, what other options were considered, and how many gloves will be bought.
A few details deserve attention. The training and recertification requirement comes from the company that makes the gloves, not from ICE itself. Whether ICE will follow that same standard or create its own training rules is not stated in the notice. That matters because ICE agents work in very different situations — from inside detention centers to making arrests out in the field — and the gloves have so far been used mainly in jails. The company's own warnings about not using the gloves on elderly people, children, pregnant people, and people with severe disabilities are relevant here, because those groups are among the people ICE encounters. How those warnings will translate into real-world decisions by agents in fast-moving situations is an open question.
The broader context here is the Trump administration's steady expansion of what ICE officers can do and the tools they carry. Giving agents a close-range device that delivers up to 380 volts fits a pattern of increasing the enforcement power available to individual officers. Whether DHS's description of the gloves as tools for "distraction and de-escalation" will hold up under the scrutiny that civil liberties groups and congressional Democrats are likely to apply is the question that will shape the political trajectory of this procurement as it moves toward the March 2027 deadline.
