1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

We demand that ICE and DHS immediately cancel their plan to buy, test, or deploy electric-shock gloves—and demand that Congress block this $20M in funding and investigate ICE’s use of force. ICE has a well-documented history of violence, abuse, and conduct that advocates and courts have challenged as violating people’s human rights and constitutional protections. It must not be given another weapon to inflict pain, force obedience, and terrorize people whether in its custody or in our communities or against people exercising their first amendment rights to protest and free speech. ICE reportedly plans to spend up to $20 million of our public money on thousands of electric-shock gloves—devices designed to deliver intense pain through direct skin contact to inflict anguish and compel “compliance.” ICE’s budget and enforcement powers have expanded dramatically. It does not need another $20 million to equip officers with a violent torture tool whose purpose is to hurt human beings into submission. Calling electric shocks “distraction” or “de-escalation” is bureaucratic doublespeak. Pain is not care. Coercion is not safety. Torture is not public service. This agency should not receive yet another way to abuse power against PoC, immigrants, detained people, protesters, or anyone it decides is “noncompliant.” No officer should be authorized to press an electrified glove against a person’s body to make them obey. What dystopian hell is this? It certainly is not America. We demand that DHS and ICE: • Cancel all shock-glove procurement, testing, pilots, purchases, and deployment. • Release all contracts, policies, legal reviews, training materials, and use-of-force records related to these devices. • Prohibit the devices in arrests, detention, transport, and field operations. • Fund due process, legal representation, family unity, and community support—not pain-compliance weapons. Stop funding ICE’s violence. Stop the shock gloves.