ICE Buys Electric Gloves To Modernize Compassion
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has awarded a $16.7 million no-bid contract for 6,000 pairs of electric-shock gloves, giving federal officers a humane new way to de-escalate encounters by sending electricity directly through another person’s body. Manufactured by Kentucky-based Compliant Technologies, the gloves resemble ordinary patrol gear until activated, when they deliver a painful shock intended to promote the traditional American civic virtue of immediate obedience. ICE policy permits their use during arrests, detainee transport, detention-facility disturbances and episodes of “active or passive” resistance, closing the longstanding enforcement loophole that allowed motionless people to avoid electrocution.
President Donald Trump praised the purchase as a breakthrough in compassionate law enforcement. “These are beautiful gloves, very gentle, probably the gentlest electricity anybody has ever felt, and people are saying, ‘Sir, please shock me again,’ because they understand this is what safety feels like,” Trump said, citing the favorable reviews routinely produced when the federal government speaks on behalf of people in custody. White House border czar Tom Homan has defended the devices as an alternative to deadly force, formally establishing that any government action that leaves a person alive qualifies as customer service.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and 15 other Democratic senators urged ICE to cancel the purchase, raising obsolete concerns about medical safety, civil liberties, training and oversight. The Department of Homeland Security treated those objections as an attempt to endanger officers, noting that accountability could delay the split-second administrative process of deciding whether passive resistance includes sitting, standing, lying down, looking away or failing to display sufficient gratitude. At roughly $2,500 per glove, taxpayers are not merely purchasing pain; they are purchasing premium, sole-source, federally accessorized pain with technical support, procurement paperwork and the comforting assurance that constitutional restraint is now wearable. Electric shock is compassion because the government bought it in bulk.
* None of the quotes in this article were spoken by an actual person. More info.