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The Department of Homeland Security plans to spend up to $20 million equipping ICE officers with gloves that deliver electric shocks.

Getting into it: DHS filed paperwork Monday for thousands of the devices, listed in the documents as conductive distraction and de-escalation devices, with delivery targeted by March 2027. The department said the no-bid solicitation may go up Friday. The product is the G.L.O.V.E., short for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, made by Compliant Technologies of Kentucky. The gloves look and work like standard patrol gear until an officer hits a button on the wrist, arming the electrical mode. From there, any contact with skin delivers the shock.

The manual puts the maximum at 380 volts, roughly three times what comes out of a standard US outlet, at up to 30 pulses per second. It says the device breaks the subject’s ability to coordinate muscle movement. The gloves require skin contact to work, though they can function through thin wet clothing, and built-in microprocessors log every activation. They would go to officers in two ICE divisions, Enforcement and Removal Operations and Homeland Security Investigations, making ICE the first federal agency to carry them.

The company behind the gloves says the technology is humane and has never caused a documented injury, because the current stays on the surface rather than traveling into the body, and produces no feedback into other officers who grab the same person. Its manual tells users not to deploy it as punishment or against people who are only being verbally defiant, and to avoid the elderly, small children, pregnant women and the severely disabled, and it calls for a backup officer on hand to hold the subject during use. The company also requires a training course before an officer can carry the gloves, with recertification every two years.

DHS did not answer the AP’s initial inquiry but told other outlets that ICE constantly assesses what its officers need to “safely arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens from our country,” that every decision is reviewed for consistency with law enforcement policy and standards, and that officers are highly trained in de-escalation.

In a statement, National Immigration Law Center President Kica Mantos said, “Arming poorly trained agents with electric shock gloves to inflict pain on our neighbors is disgusting and barbaric.”