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By Anna Rahmanan
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s plan to spend up to $20 million on gloves that deliver painful electric shocks has produced an unsurprising backlash. But the technology also raises a less intuitive possibility: if ICE officers are going to use force during arrests, could a lower-output device designed for close-contact control sometimes be less harmful than the weapons and physical tactics they already carry?
There is no strong independent evidence yet showing that ICE’s proposed G.L.O.V.E. devices are safer in practice than Tasers or other force options, but the manufacturer’s specifications indicate that they work differently, while decades of research on conducted-energy weapons show why law enforcement has long sought ways to control resistant subjects without relying on more injurious forms of force.
Why the Glove Is Different From a Taser
The Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, or G.L.O.V.E., is designed to cause localized pain through direct skin contact, rather than produce the broader neuromuscular incapacitation associated with a Taser.
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The numbers help explain the difference, although voltage by itself is an imperfect measure of danger. The glove's manufacturer, Compliant Technologies LLC, lists the current glove at roughly 324 to 362 volts. By comparison, the National Institute of Justice says a conventional conducted-energy weapon can generate up to 50,000 volts when arcing in an open circuit and about 5,000 volts once its probes complete a circuit through a person.
Newer Tasers operate differently: Axon says its older TASER 7, X2 and X26P models typically deliver less than 2,000 volts into a person, while the newer TASER 10 delivers less than 1,000 volts.
Those figures do not mean that a 5,000-volt Taser is automatically many times more dangerous than a roughly 350-volt glove. Electrical injury depends on current, waveform, pulse duration, the path of the electricity, and the physical condition of the person receiving it. The important operational difference is what the devices are designed to do: Tasers can incapacitate a person by disrupting muscle control from several feet away, while the glove requires direct contact and is intended primarily to produce localized pain.
That makes the more useful comparison one of force, rather than voltage alone. The National Institute of Justice has found that conducted-energy devices and pepper spray can reduce suspect injuries compared with some other uses of force, although it has also cautioned that electrical weapons carry risks and should be governed by restrictive policies.
If the glove allows an officer already grappling with someone to gain control without firing Taser probes, striking the person or prolonging a physical struggle, its lower-intensity electrical effect could amount to a step down the use-of-force ladder.
But will ICE officers actually use it that way?
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Less Force Can Still Mean Real Force
Law enforcement’s use-of-force history offers an important comparison: Tasers were adopted in part because officers needed options between hands-on fighting and the use of firearms. A Justice Department-sponsored review found that conducted-energy devices could reduce injuries to officers and suspects compared with some other methods of force, even though they still carry medical risks and require strict limits on their use.
That history complicates the instinctive reaction to the G.L.O.V.E. Pain is already a feature of many less-lethal tools, from Tasers to pepper spray. The more relevant question, then, is not simply whether the glove hurts, but whether it causes less harm than the tactic it replaces.
The glove’s manufacturer says it should not be used for punishment or mere verbal defiance and warns against use on children, pregnant women, elderly people and people with serious disabilities. Those restrictions resemble safeguards already attached to other electrical weapons.
If ICE officers ultimately use the glove in situations where they might otherwise resort to striking a person, deploying a Taser or engaging in a prolonged physical struggle, it could potentially reduce injuries while remaining a coercive use of force. If it simply becomes an easier way to inflict pain, however, the harm-reduction argument collapses.
The Real Risk Is How Easily the Gloves Can Be Used
Unlike a Taser fired from several feet away, the G.L.O.V.E. requires direct skin contact. It can also deliver pain without leaving the burns or contact marks associated with Tasers. That invisibility worries civil rights advocates because witnesses or video footage may have difficulty establishing when an officer activated it.
There is also a sobering real-world case: a pending wrongful death lawsuit alleges that a 43-year-old man died after being shocked 27 times with G.L.O.V.E. devices and another 13 times with a Taser at a Kentucky jail in 2024. An internal investigation found that two glove applications lasted 45 and 99 seconds, far beyond the manufacturer's recommended 15-second limit.
Although the lawsuit remains an allegation rather than proof that the gloves caused his death, the episode exposes the weakness in the "less lethal" argument: a theoretically safer device can become dangerous when officers repeatedly use it outside recommended limits.
Body Cameras Could Decide Whether the Gloves Are Safer
The safety case for the gloves also depends on whether ICE can show when, why and how often officers use them.
ICE is separately planning to spend between $10 million and $20 million on body-camera equipment for Homeland Security Investigations and Enforcement and Removal Operations personnel, according to a DHS procurement record. ICE policy already requires body cameras during certain enforcement activities, including at-large arrests and attempts to execute criminal and administrative warrants.
That makes oversight particularly important. Because the G.L.O.V.E. may be less visible to bystanders than a conventional Taser deployment, ICE would need clear use-of-force rules, activation logs, body-camera footage and supervisory review to establish whether officers are using the device as a lower-force alternative or simply as an easier way to inflict pain.
If officers use the gloves instead of striking people, deploying Taser probes or engaging in prolonged physical struggles, and those activations are consistently recorded and reviewed, ICE could make a credible case that the technology reduces harm. If activations are difficult to detect or poorly documented, the same feature that makes the gloves less visibly violent could also make misuse harder to prove.
The question, then, is not simply whether the gloves are less powerful than a Taser. It is whether ICE can show that they are replacing more injurious forms of force—under rules strict enough to ensure that a lower-force tool does not simply become an easier one to abuse.
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