1. United States
2. Calif.
3. Letter

I am writing to strongly oppose the Department of Homeland Security’s planned purchase and distribution of electric-shock gloves to Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel, and to ask you to take immediate action to stop this program. The device in question—the CTG-5 Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, or G.L.O.V.E.—is not simply another pair of protective gloves. It is a direct-contact electrical weapon designed to cause pain and interfere with a person’s ability to physically respond. ICE has announced plans to spend as much as $20 million acquiring these devices for personnel in Homeland Security Investigations and Enforcement and Removal Operations. ([AP News][1]) Calling these devices “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices” does not change what they do: an officer activates the glove and places it against a person's bare skin to administer an electrical shock intended to compel compliance. That distinction matters enormously. A weapon that is built directly into an officer’s hand presents uniquely troubling possibilities for abuse. Unlike a firearm, Taser, baton, or other visibly identifiable weapon, an electrified glove can be activated during ordinary physical contact. The line between restraining a person and electrically shocking that person can become nearly invisible to witnesses, bystanders, cameras, and potentially even the person reviewing an incident afterward. That makes meaningful accountability more difficult at precisely the moment when greater accountability is needed. Even the manufacturer acknowledges limits to the device's appropriate use. Its guidance warns against using the gloves as punishment or in response to verbal defiance alone and identifies children, pregnant people, older adults, and some people with disabilities as populations for whom use may be particularly dangerous. ([AP News][1]) These are not hypothetical populations that ICE will never encounter. They are people who routinely exist within immigrant families, detention facilities, transportation operations, and enforcement encounters. There is also a more fundamental question: **Why should a federal agency carrying out civil immigration enforcement be given a device whose central function is to inflict pain through direct electrical contact in order to produce compliance?** The fact that a device is described as “less lethal” does not make its use benign, humane, or necessary. Nor should “less lethal” become shorthand for acceptable. Human Rights Watch has pointed to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture's conclusion that direct-contact electric-shock weapons are inherently cruel, inhuman, or degrading and its recommendation that governments prohibit them. ([Human Rights Watch][2]) There are profound implications when the government equips an enforcement officer with the ability to administer painful electrical shocks simply by pressing a control on a glove and touching another human being. This technology also deserves scrutiny because the proposed procurement is extraordinarily large. DHS has indicated that it may spend between $10 million and $20 million on these devices, reportedly through a sole-source or no-bid procurement involving Compliant Technologies. ([AP News][1]) Before taxpayers finance deployment of an unusual use-of-force technology on this scale, the government should be required to demonstrate through independent evidence—not simply manufacturer assurances—that it is necessary, medically safe, effective, and capable of being deployed with meaningful safeguards against abuse. The burden should be on the government to establish why such a weapon is necessary, not on the public to prove how it might be abused after people have already been harmed. I therefore urge you to: 1. **Immediately halt the purchase and further distribution of electric-shock gloves to ICE personnel.** 2. **Investigate the procurement process and the justification for spending up to $20 million on these devices.** 3. **Require independent medical and use-of-force review before any federal law-enforcement agency is permitted to deploy direct-contact electrical weapons.** 4. **Require public disclosure of all policies governing their use, including prohibited uses, vulnerable populations, training requirements, activation records, complaints, injuries, and disciplinary actions.** 5. **Require body-camera documentation and automatic reporting of every activation if these devices remain in service while the program is being reviewed.** 6. **Consider prohibiting direct-contact electric-shock weapons for civil immigration enforcement altogether.** Immigration policy is politically contentious. Basic limits on the government's ability to deliberately inflict pain should not be. Regardless of one's position on immigration enforcement, people in government custody or being placed under arrest retain their human dignity and their right to be free from unnecessary or excessive force. Giving thousands of federal immigration officers an electrical pain-compliance device worn on the hand moves us in precisely the wrong direction. Government power should be most constrained where an individual is most powerless. A person surrounded by armed federal officers, detained, restrained, transported, or facing removal is already subject to extraordinary state authority. The answer should not be to make it easier for an officer to inflict pain with the touch of a hand. Please oppose this purchase, demand immediate congressional and public scrutiny, and work to prevent these devices from becoming a normalized part of immigration enforcement. References: [1]: https://apnews.com/article/85ff746d3e0ee5f39e7a9a3f1f576252?utm_source=chatgpt.com "AP Exclusive: ICE plans to give officers gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks" [2]: https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/08/18/us-ice-to-deploy-dangerous-electric-shock-gloves?utm_source=chatgpt.com "US ICE to Deploy Dangerous ‘Electric Shock Gloves’ | Human Rights Watch"