‘A High Potential for Abuse’: Plan to Equip ICE Agents With Electric Shock Gloves Draws Alarm From Former Officials

An ICE agent points and threatens to use their taser on protesters outside the federal immigration center at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, where ICE is housing detained immigrants on May 27, 2026. —Adam Gray—Getty Images The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is moving to equip immigration officers with gloves that can administer electrical shocks, a plan that is sparking alarm from former department officials.

According to a notice published by DHS this week, it will spend up to $20 million to purchase Generated Low Output Voltage Emitters, or G.L.O.V.Es, by the end of March 2027.

The department, which described the gloves in the notice as a “conductive distraction and de-escalation device,” said they would be issued to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

“ICE is constantly assessing the needs of our officers in the field to ensure they have the tools and equipment necessary to safely arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens from our country,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement to TIME.

The plan to equip immigration officers with the devices comes as the Trump Administration has faced widespread scrutiny over the use of force in its immigration crackdown, which has seen at least 10 people die in encounters with federal agents since Trump returned to office last January.

The DHS spokesperson tells TIME that 70% of the people ICE arrests are “dangerous illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime,” echoing Trump and federal officials’ repeated claims that the crackdown is targeting the “worst of the worst”—though data have shown that a majority of those held in ICE custody during Trump’s second term have no criminal convictions on their records.

Read More: As ICE Detention Expands, Deaths Reach a 22-Year High The notice of DHS’s plans to purchase the gloves has drawn concern from former DHS officials, who tell TIME that the devices aren’t necessary as an enforcement method against the civilian population—and that their use in that capacity would pose numerous risks.

“The idea that you need tools like this, this level of force, to subdue a non-criminal immigrant who's in a secure environment … that is alarming,” says John Sandweg, who served as the acting director of ICE and acting general counsel of DHS during the Obama Administration.

Sandweg contends that there is “a high potential for abuse” with the new devices due to the rapid hiring of new immigration officers who he says are not receiving sufficient training.

Documents produced by two DHS whistleblowers in February showed that ICE had significantly scaled up its hiring while axing several screening and training protocols for officers.

“We're seeing lots of problems with training on use of force,” Sandweg says.