The Department of Homeland Security is considering a major purchase of electric-shock gloves for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, raising new questions about the limits of force, human dignity and accountability in immigration enforcement.
According to The Guardian, DHS published plans earlier this month to spend as much as $20 million to equip ICE officers with the devices by March 2027. The gloves, marketed under the name G.L.O.V.E. — Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter — allow an officer to deliver an electrical shock through direct contact with a person’s exposed skin.
The proposed purchase comes as ICE continues an intensified immigration enforcement campaign under President Donald Trump and as civil rights advocates raise concerns about oversight of federal officers’ use of force.
A DHS spokesperson defended the agency’s consideration of new equipment, telling The Guardian that “ICE is constantly assessing the needs of our officers in the field to ensure they have the tools and equipment necessary to safely arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens from our country.”
“Every decision is made with careful consideration and appropriately reviewed to ensure that any technology ICE utilizes is consistent with all applicable law enforcement policies and standards,” the spokesperson added.
The gloves are manufactured by Kentucky-based Compliant Technologies and are described as a “conductive distraction and de-escalation device,” according to The Guardian. They are restricted for sale to verified organizations and personnel, including law enforcement, corrections, security, military and emergency medical services, and their use requires training.
The CT-G5 model operates between 324 and 380 volts, according to The Guardian. Unlike a Taser, which can fire probes from a distance, the glove requires the wearer to touch or grip a person’s bare skin while activating the device.
The manufacturer’s user manual instructs officers to avoid using the gloves on elderly people, small children, pregnant women and people with disabilities.
The technology is already being used by some law enforcement agencies around the country. An NPR analysis cited by The Guardian estimated that approximately 50 police departments across 20 states use the devices.
Their use in schools has also generated controversy.
The Omaha Police Department purchased 40 pairs in May 2025 for just under $66,000, according to city documents cited by The Guardian. Twenty-nine of the department’s 34 school resource officers had been trained to use the gloves in public middle and high schools.
In one reported incident, a school resource officer used the device twice on a male middle school student who was described in the police report as displaying “highly aggressive and assaultive behavior.” According to The Guardian’s account of the report, the first contact lasted approximately one second and the second lasted two to three seconds, causing the student to fall face down on the floor.
The student reportedly declined medical assistance afterward. Omaha police later agreed to stop using the gloves in the school district after the superintendent requested that the practice be discontinued, according to NBC reporting cited by The Guardian.
More serious allegations involving the devices have emerged from Kentucky correctional facilities.
A wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the family of Johnathan Mansfield alleges that Mansfield was exposed 27 times to the G.L.O.V.E. and 13 times to a Taser while detained at the Madison County Detention Center following a 2024 arrest for public intoxication. He suffered cardiac arrest and died two weeks later, according to The Guardian.
The lawsuit cites an internal investigation stating that Mansfield “suffered a cardiac arrest following the series of Taser and G.L.O.V.E. exposures.” According to the complaint, individual glove exposures allegedly included one lasting 45 seconds and another lasting 99 seconds.
The lawsuit remains pending, and the allegations have not been established as findings of liability.
Another case involved Joshua Elswick, a pretrial detainee who sued a Kentucky jail officer after the gloves were used while officers attempted to remove his restraints. A federal court dismissed Elswick’s excessive-force lawsuit in June 2025, finding the officer’s use of force was warranted, according to The Guardian. An appeals court upheld that decision in January.
Civil liberties advocates argue that expanding the technology to ICE could create additional risks.
Sarah Mehta, deputy director of government affairs in the equality division of the American Civil Liberties Union, told The Guardian that ICE “is putting these [gloves] in the hands of an agency that has dropped its hiring standards, its training, its background requirements in its hiring spree.”
“What’s really terrifying is use of them on the streets, potentially to terrify people, to create a chilling effect,” Mehta said.
Attorney Sara Collins, who represented Elswick, offered a more qualified assessment of less-lethal technology generally.
“With proper training and use, effective, less-lethal force options are much-needed resources in law enforcement,” Collins told The Guardian. “Shock gloves, however, are not a new tool.”
She said she was troubled that most American law enforcement agencies do not use the devices and cited “feasibility, practicality, training, risk of error, and intent” among her concerns about their potential deployment by ICE.
For Catholics, the controversy touches a principle that extends beyond the political arguments surrounding immigration policy: every human person possesses an inherent dignity that must be respected, including migrants, detainees, suspects and those accused or convicted of crimes.
Catholic teaching recognizes the legitimate responsibility of public authorities to enforce just laws and protect society. At the same time, the Church insists that the exercise of governmental authority must respect the dignity and fundamental rights of every person.
As federal officials consider putting a new use-of-force device into the hands of immigration officers nationwide, questions about training, proportionality, accountability and safeguards for vulnerable people will remain central to the debate.
The issue is therefore not simply whether authorities may enforce immigration law, but how that authority is exercised — and whether the dignity of the human person remains protected when force is used.
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