Lawmakers Push DHS to Cancel Its Shock Gloves Contract

Federal agents walk down a street while conducting immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis, Feb. 5, 2026.Ryan Murphy/AP Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. Last week, DHS finalized its $16.7 million purchase of 6,650 pairs of electric shock gloves from the Kentucky-based company Compliant Technologies. That comes out to about $2,400 per pair, plus some accessories like glove fresheners in case the ICE agents wearing these direct contact electroshock weapons get sweaty. Almost as quickly as the contract was finalized, pushback reached the legislative branch in a classic Congressional form: a whole bunch of open letters. A group of Senators wrote to interim ICE director David Venturella on August 27, asking him whether there will be any tracking of how these gloves are used. Members of the House Committee on Homeland Security wrote a similar letter August 31. And on that same day, a group of 49 Democratic members of Congress led by Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) wrote a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin demanding that he cancel the shock gloves contract. “The decision to equip civil immigration enforcement agents with electric shock gloves continues a deeply disturbing escalation in the militarization of DHS — as well as sustained efforts to shield itself from accountability,” the lawmakers wrote. Their letter cites Mother Jones reporting on how police departments use the gloves to inflict pain while avoiding legal liability. “This Administration continues to outfit ICE and CBP with the tools of an occupying paramilitary force—despite widespread human rights violations carried out by its agents during immigration enforcement actions.” As I reported last month, human rights organizations suggest that the gloves are not, as Compliant Technologies says on its website, “humane.” The technology is unregulated “despite the clear human rights risks associated with its use,” Amnesty International researchers wrote in a 2025 report detailing instances in which electric-shock devices have been used for torture. The report ends with a recommendation that countries “cease use of, decommission and destroy any stockpiles of such prohibited electric shock weapons.” Yumna Rizvi, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Victims of Torture, called the gloves “inherently abusive equipment that facilitates torture.” On the state and local level, police departments are facing angry communities demanding they cancel their contracts with Compliant Technologies. In Nebraska’s largest school district, after reporting by Nebraska Public Media revealed that school resource officers had used the devices on students, Omaha police were forced to stop wearing shock gloves in the halls of middle and high schools. In California, meanwhile, a bill banning law enforcement operating in the state from using wearable electroshock devices passed the legislature Monday night. The ban extends through 2030 and requires the state Department of Justice to study the weapons’ safety. “Imagine your family, your friends and loved ones or even yourself being incapacitated by federal, state or local law enforcement who do not have the necessary training to ensure that you don’t suffer from adverse health effects due to being shocked,” said California Democratic Assemblymember LaShae Sharp-Collins, who sponsored the bill, in an Aug. 26 Senate committee hearing. The Sacramento Sheriff’s Department is the only California agency known to have purchased Compliant Technologies’ shock gloves. In August, it spent $35,000 on 10 pairs, as well as 10 shock bands to be placed on a detained person’s arm or wrist, as the Sacramento Bee reported. That sheriff’s department opposes the ban, as do numerous other law enforcement agencies. “This is a bad policy from a California law enforcement perspective, and it’s really only gonna be a message to the feds that’s going to fail to land,” California State Sheriffs’ Association lobbyist Cory Salzillo said at an August 26 hearing. The bill is expected to face legal challenges from the federal government. “Sanctuary politicians attempting to ban our federal law enforcement from any safety equipment is despicable and a deliberate attempt to undermine and endanger our officers,” a DHS spokesperson told Mother Jones. “To be crystal clear: we will not abide by unconstitutional bans. The Supremacy Clause makes it clear that California’s sanctuary politicians do not control federal law enforcement.”