ICE, the US immigration police, equips its agents with electric gloves, raising concerns about possible abuse
The plan to equip American immigration police with electrically pulsed gloves has sparked a wave of concern in recent days about the potential abuse of such a tool in the hands of a police force criticized for its zeal and lack of experience.
“As if attacking people or shooting them in the street wasn’t enough”Democratic MP Maxwell Frost was indignant: “They are now spending $20 million out of taxpayers’ pockets to equip their lawless, masked henchmen with painful electric pulse gloves. »
ICE, the federal police force charged by Donald Trump’s government with implementing its policy of mass expulsion of undocumented immigrants, has become the symbol of the excesses of this policy seen as particularly brutal.
The death of two American demonstrators in January in Minneapolis under the bullets of ICE agents provoked national outrage, boosted by images of raids targeting Hispanic populations and visibly poorly trained agents.
The information, first reported by the AP agency, of a contract between the ministry which oversees ICE and the company which manufactures these electrical impulse gloves has further fueled concerns about potential abuse. The contract with the Department of Homeland Security calls for spending between $10 million and $20 million with Compliant Technologies, the manufacturer of these gloves.
The Instagram account of this Kentucky company promotes their operation: during a physical altercation, an agent applies his glove to the arm of a person, who immediately falls to the ground, as if stunned.
Many police forces and prison officers are already using this tool across the country. The electrical shock transmitted would be less strong than a Taser, an electric pulse gun.
The ICE “continuously assesses the needs of (his) agents on the ground to ensure they have the tools and equipment necessary to safely carry out the apprehension and deportation of illegal alien offenders”said the ministry, to respond to criticism.
“A dangerous new tool”
If the work of immigration officers is “very difficult”, “deploying this non-lethal technology at a time when you’re not really interested in training officers to use this technology is really worrying”said John Sandweg, a former acting director of ICE under Barack Obama. “It doesn’t take much to imagine this tool being used against a mother who resists a little bit because she is separated from her child”he worried on the MS NOW channel, warning of possible abuses “too easy” against “a population that poses no danger”.
This tool “won’t protect anyone and just give ICE a dangerous new tool to go after both American citizens and immigrants”denounced for her part the Democratic MP Pramila Jayapal.
The ACLU, the large American association for the defense of civil liberties, marked on the left, declared in July to have filed more than 50 complaints concerning potential abuses by immigration police across the country.
These criticisms do not slow down the operations of this police force, which has seen its budget increase rapidly, quite the contrary.
In July, ICE arrested more than 51,000 people across the country for immigration violations, according to department figures cited by US media, the highest figure since Mr. Trump returned to the White House in January 2025.
In early August, the family of a detainee at the Adelanto, California, ICE facility, Carlitos Ricardo Parias, recorded a video call in which he showed a bottle of water containing what he said were worms; his fellow prisoners denounce the distribution of rotten food and the lack of care.
