ICE Plans to Buy Shock Gloves That Army Study Found Caused Intense Pain

ICE leaders were aware of those findings before signing a $16.7 million contract in August to purchase the gloves, the records show. The study examined the gloves at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas in October 2024, during the final months of the Biden administration.

Army employees role-playing combative prisoners stopped resisting seconds after officers applied shocks by touching the gloves to their skin, the study found. Several were large-statured men. They were left with "fatigue, soreness and excessive apprehensiveness to being shocked again," the study said.

The gloves carry the brand name G.L.O.V.E., for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, and are manufactured by Compliant Technologies, a company owned by military veterans and based in Lexington, Kentucky.

The planned purchase emerged as the second Trump administration pursues a hardline anti-immigration crackdown, with record arrests and detention of immigrants the government wants to deport. Experts expressed alarm and pointed to high-profile lawsuits over the gloves' use in local correctional facilities. In one case, a 43-year-old man died after allegedly being shocked 40 times by officers using the gloves and a Taser in a Kentucky county jail; his widow is suing authorities.

The study's authors told the Associated Press: "After experiencing the effects of the GLOVE ... participants stated just seeing the GLOVE was enough to make them want to comply."

ICE has called the gloves "distraction and de-escalation devices" that will be safer than other non-lethal options to subdue targets for arrest and deportation and protesters who create civil disturbances. The agency has argued that rapid compliance will keep officers safer and prevent incidents from requiring potentially lethal force.

Critics have warned the gloves will give ICE another weapon to intimidate and brutalize people, at a time when the agency faces criticism over excessive force that has left deaths and injuries across the country. "The military assessment in ICE's own files shows that these gloves can cause 'intense pain' and force compliance. It does not establish that they are safe," said Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight. "Everyone should be alarmed that ICE is preparing to deploy a tool designed to inflict, at best, intense pain, without showing that it is safe for the people who will be subjected to it."

ICE released the study and other documents to American Oversight as part of the group's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the agency seeking records related to its use of force.

The military prison study assessed whether the gloves could effectively remove combative prisoners from cells, respond to disturbances in common areas and transport uncooperative inmates. Role-playing employees conducted several scenarios with and without the gloves, including violent encounters in which inmates were to fight as hard as they could.

Using the gloves "increased the efficiency" of teams carrying out forced cell extractions and responding to disturbances by reducing the length of physical encounters, keeping guards from becoming exhausted and preventing injuries, the study found. The gloves did not "significantly change" the time it took to control inmates during escorts but required less effort. "GLOVE provides a boost in confidence to smaller or less trained members," the study found, adding that "inmate compliance was immediate" compared with other methods.

The electric jolt does not cause the body to freeze as a Taser shock does, but instead "works by overloading the peripheral nerve endings" of the skin to cause pain, the study said. Participants who were wet or had oil on their skin described even more powerful shocks, and one reported discomfort for 30 minutes afterward.

ICE's contract requires the manufacturer to deliver the gloves within six months. Compliant Technologies owner Jeff Niklaus declined to make himself available for an interview. White House border czar Tom Homan has said it could "be a while" before the gloves are in the field because ICE is still ironing out training and policy issues. A statement released Tuesday by ICE did not address questions about the study and the status of the rollout, but said "officers are highly trained in de-escalation tactics."