The Trump regime has waged a campaign of terror against immigrants — and people it perceives as immigrants from certain countries — that is unjustified, inhumane, and immoral.
And the brutality is about to get worse still.
That’s because Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are being outfitted with gloves that can deliver debilitating — potentially even fatal — electric shocks to anyone they touch.
Public Citizen has formally launched an investigation — demanding records under the Freedom of Information Act — to find out what’s really going on with these ICE shock gloves.
Here’s more about this newest investigation into the Trump regime’s authoritarian tactics:
- These ICE goon shock gloves are being delivered by a company that got a rushed, no-bid contract paid for by our tax dollars.
- See the Reflecting Pool fiasco for an example of how things tend to go when the Trump administration hastily doles out work on multi-million-dollar federal projects without bothering to do any due diligence. (As it happens, the contract for these shock gloves is $16.7 million — just about the same amount the administration paid the contractor that botched the Reflecting Pool.)
- The gloves can shock someone 30 times per second and deliver up to 380 volts. That’s more than three times the output of a household electrical outlet — which itself is enough to kill hundreds of Americans every year in accidental electrocutions.
- What is going to happen when ICE agents — who have demonstrated an absolute disregard for the safety of others, up to and including murdering unarmed citizens in broad daylight and on video — get their hands on, or rather in, these gloves?
- The company that got the contract is called Compliant Technologies. Was the contract awarded in a manner compliant with federal procurement laws? Will ICE agents comply with the company’s own user manual, which recommends not using the gloves on the elderly, small children, pregnant women, and the “severely handicapped”? Will ICE agents use the gloves in compliance with all local, state, and federal laws?
- More broadly, should ICE agents be using these gloves at all? The shock gloves look like ordinary black gloves. So ICE agents could use them to administer tremendous pain and — unlike, say, a gun or a taser — it wouldn’t be obvious they were using what amounts to a weapon.
We are seeking information — which the American people are entitled to see — about the contract for these shock gloves, research into their safety (or lack thereof), whatever training ICE agents are (or aren’t) getting, how their use for “crowd control” (one of the uses envisioned by the Trump regime) impacts Americans’ civil rights, and more.
We have filed formal Freedom of Information Act requests with both Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
From Public Citizen, 9/17/26