ICE agents are getting electric shock gloves designed to stop confrontations before they turn fatal—and the establishment press is calling it an escalation.
The Department of Homeland Security plans to spend up to $20 million on thousands of G.L.O.V.E. devices—Generated Low Output Voltage Emitters—that deliver painful but non-incapacitating shocks. The alternative is what happens when agents have no middle option: at least six people have been shot and killed by immigration enforcement since last year, including motorists in Maine and Texas just last month. But you wouldn't grasp that from the coverage, which buries the less-lethal purpose and frames the gloves as cruelty.
Border czar Tom Homan defended the plan Thursday on Fox News. "It's another device to help someone get compliant when they are not," he said. "You can't just go from 0 to 100, right, and the first thing you go for is lethal force."
The New York Daily News called the gloves "controversial" and framed them as "an escalation in the nationwide mass deportation campaign." The AP and SFGATE led with civil rights groups and Democrats in Congress attacking the plan. What none of them emphasized: these gloves exist precisely because going from zero to lethal force gets people killed.
A Kentucky jail that's been using the gloves for four years says they work. Nelson County Jailer Justin Hall told the AP the shocks don't incapacitate people or leave burn marks like Tasers do. He's been shocked more than ten times during training—"the pain was intense but stops once the gloves are no longer touching skin." Hall said the gloves are used sparingly but get compliance when de-escalation fails. "It's just a safer way. It's safer on the inmate. It's safer on the staff. And most of the time, most of the time we get compliance."
The gloves won't hit the field immediately. Homan said training protocols are still being worked out and it would "be awhile" before deployment. University of South Carolina criminology professor Geoffrey Alpert, quoted by the AP, said ICE should start with a smaller purchase and warned about "user error" with officers who "may not be trained in other strategies like de-escalation." Fair concern—but the absence of less-lethal options is exactly what puts people in body bags.
The Daily News noted the contract is a no-bid deal, which deserves scrutiny. Follow the money: $20 million to Compliant Technologies LLC with no competitive bidding raises legitimate questions. But the core story remains simple—agents in the field need something between pepper spray and a firearm. Six dead since last year proves it.
The press would rather faint over shock gloves than admit the alternative is far worse.
