Shock gloves bought by ICE cause intense pain, Army study says

Participants in a military exercise felt intense pain, stopped fighting immediately and feared additional exposures, according to an Army study.

The shock gloves immigration agents could soon use to control detainees and protesters worked so powerfully during a military exercise that participants felt intense pain, stopped fighting immediately and feared additional exposures, according to a previously unreleased Army study. Immigration and Customs Enforcement leaders were aware of the findings before signing a $16.7 million contract to purchase 6,000 pairs of shock gloves in August, according to records obtained by the watchdog group American Oversight and shared with The Associated Press. The shocks had a profound impact on Army employees who played the role of combative prisoners during the exercise, which took place at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas in October 2024.

The participants, several of whom were large-statured men, stopped resisting seconds after officers applied shocks by touching gloves to their skin, and were left with "fatigue, soreness and excessive apprehensiveness to being shocked again," the study found. "After experiencing the effects of the GLOVE … participants stated just seeing the GLOVE was enough to make them want to comply," the authors wrote.Watchdog says gloves cause pain and raise safety concernsIn contract paperwork released on a federal database in August, ICE called the gloves "distraction and de-escalation devices" that will be safer than other non-lethal options to subdue targets for arrest and deportation and protesters who create