An agency with a documented record of excessive force just requested $20 million for weapons that can be deployed without witnesses noticing.

"They will be able to deploy electric shocks with the slight push of a button that maybe nobody else can see them do."

— Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, ACLU deputy project director on policing

On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security quietly published a procurement notice that would have gone unnoticed if the Associated Press had not flagged it: Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to spend between $10 million and $20 million to equip its agents with electric shock gloves.

The devices, manufactured by Compliant Technologies LLC of Lexington, Kentucky, are called the CTG-5 G.L.O.V.E. (Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter). They look like ordinary patrol gloves until the officer presses a switch that delivers a painful electric stimulus through direct skin contact. The manufacturer's website describes the resulting sensation as "usually effective in bringing individuals into compliance in less than three seconds." It adds that the gloves "leave no burns, marks, or scars."

Translation: a concealed weapon designed to inflict pain without leaving evidence.

The procurement notice targets Homeland Security Investigations and Enforcement and Removal Operations officers and agents, with delivery planned by March 2027. A no-bid contract solicitation could be published as early as this Friday. The manufacturer declined to comment when contacted.

The gloves are not entirely new to law enforcement. Some jails and police departments have used them for years, primarily in controlled facility settings: subduing inmates who are harming themselves, restraining violent suspects refusing to enter squad cars, managing high-risk transport situations. John Peters, president of the Institute for the Prevention of In-Custody Deaths, told the AP that the sensation is "immediate and sharp," comparing it to a bee sting. He said the device can be "certainly an effective tool" against physical resistance, particularly for smaller or older officers.

But Peters also noted the manufacturer's explicit warnings: the device should not be used as punishment, against people merely exhibiting "verbal defiance or belligerence," or on high-risk populations including children, pregnant women, the elderly, and disabled people. Users must complete a certification course and be recertified every two years.

The question is not whether the gloves can work. The question is what happens when an agency with a well-documented pattern of misconduct is handed a pain-compliance device that can be activated without anyone else noticing.

ICE spent much of the last year under intense scrutiny. The agency has been accused of rampant civil rights abuses, excessive force, and extrajudicial killings. In July alone, ICE fatally shot two men without criminal records within the span of a week in Maine. Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, 25, was killed in Biddeford. ICE later acknowledged that neither victim was the target of their operations.

When CNN correspondent Brian Todd discussed the gloves plan on air, he and anchor Brianna Keilar both raised the obvious concern: you cannot always tell if someone is pregnant, especially in cold weather when people wear coats. If an agent confronts a woman in her first trimester and activates the gloves, the consequences could be catastrophic.

Peggy Flanagan, the Minnesota DFL Senate nominee, called the gloves "absolutely horrific" in a CNN segment shortly after the story broke.

The ACLU's Borchetta did not mince words. "ICE spent the last year showing this country they are too quick to use force," she said. "Introducing gloves that can so easily be used to deliver terrible pain in encounters is a recipe for harm to the public."

Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, went further, calling ICE a "rogue agency with an $80 billion slush fund that allows them to concoct and fund new ways to visit cruelty upon our communities." She added: "Arming poorly trained agents with electric shock gloves to inflict pain on our neighbors is disgusting and barbaric."

A DHS spokesperson offered a standard rebuttal, saying officers are "highly trained in de-escalation tactics and regularly receive ongoing use of force training." That assurance carries limited weight when the agency's own record tells a different story.

The gloves are being purchased with money from the $70 billion in additional immigration agency funding that Republicans approved in the Senate in June, voting 52-47. Only one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted against the package.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine cast a yes vote and has since faced intense protests at her Biddeford office following the July ICE killing. In a letter to Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, Collins defended her position by pointing to "reforms" passed in April, including $20 million for body cameras and $2 million for "de-escalation" training. Her office did not respond when asked whether she believed electric shock gloves constituted a good form of de-escalation.

When pressed after the Biddeford shooting, Collins declined to say she regretted her vote.

Fernanda McLaughlin, a Maine resident and community organizer, spoke at a protest outside Collins' office on Tuesday: "$70 billion to fund the terror that left my family and community in fear. You know what that money can be really used for? To feed Mainers. To fund our schools. To fund our health system."

She noted that the funding package included no guardrails "that exist in nearly every other law enforcement agency across our nation."

State-level pushback is already underway. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called the gloves a civil rights violation on their face. Attorney General Letitia James backed her up, announcing that the state was reviewing the procurement request and threatening legal action if any New Yorker is injured by the devices. "In the event that a New Yorker is injured as a result of these gloves, obviously there will be a private right of action as well as action from the state of New York," James said.

But New York's ability to rein in federal agents is already limited. Earlier this month, a federal judge voided a state law prohibiting ICE agents from concealing their faces, ruling that states cannot dictate the policies of federal law enforcement within their borders.

If the gloves are deployed covertly, as advocates fear, the legal challenge will be proving they were used at all.

The manufacturer promises no marks, no scars, no visible trace. The switch is small enough that witnesses might not see it pressed. And the agency deploying them has already shown it will lie about what happens when its agents use force.

The gloves are designed so that no one can tell they were used. That is not a feature. That is the entire product.