The Department of Homeland Security published a notice on Monday that the agency plans to spend $20 million on thousands of gloves by March that would deliver painful electric shocks, designed to help ICE officers gain compliance during their immigration crackdown.
The devices, called Glove (Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter), are manufactured by Compliant Technologies LLC of Lexington, Kentucky, and are activated with the push of a button.
The manufacturer states that “the discomfort associated with the stimulation is usually effective in bringing individuals into compliance in less than three seconds and leaves no burns, marks or scars.” The company has advertised the device as a “humane, low-optics, de-escalation solution for many situations facing our men and women in uniform.”
The gloves are already being used in law enforcement agencies and in jails. The gloves must be applied directly to someone’s skin to deliver a pain stimulus that typically helps an officer gain compliance within seconds, according to the company.
Civil rights activists are alarmed.
“ICE spent the last year showing this country they are too quick to use force. Now they will be able to deploy electric shocks with the slight push of a button that maybe nobody else can see them do,” said Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, project director for policing at the ACLU. “Introducing gloves that can so easily be used to deliver terrible pain in encounters is a recipe for harm to the public.”
The manufacturer warns the device should not be used as punishment, against people merely exhibiting “verbal defiance or belligerence” or on high-risk populations such as children, pregnant women or elderly or disabled people.