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An Army Study Showed Shock Gloves Caused 'Intense Pain' and Terrified Victims—Then ICE Ordered 6,000 Pairs of Them
“Everyone should be alarmed that ICE is preparing to deploy a tool designed to inflict, at best, intense pain," said one watchdog.
Oct 06, 2026
When US Immigration and Customs Enforcement ordered 6,000 pairs of shock gloves this summer, the agency knew that they could cause such "intense pain" that victims stopped fighting immediately and became fearful of more shocks.
That's according to The Associated Press, which on Tuesday revealed the existence of a US Army study on the gloves. ICE put in a $17 million order for the product, known as the Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter (GLOVE), in August.
In October 2024, the GLOVE was tested on Army employees at the military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to see if it could be incorporated into their practices to move noncompliant prisoners between cells.
According to the AP:
The shocks had a profound impact on Army employees who played the role of combative prisoners during the exercise... 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.
The report later noted that unlike a taser, which is designed to cause the body of a noncompliant person to freeze, the GLOVE is meant to elicit pain. It "works by overloading the peripheral nerve endings,” the study said. It also noted that participants with water or oil on their skin experienced more severe shocks and that one was left in pain for 30 minutes afterward.
The full report has not yet been released to the public; however, a four-page memo from the Department of the Army's Office of the Project Manager for Close Combat Systems summarizing its findings can be found on the website of the GLOVE's manufacturer, Compliant Technologies.
ICE has described the shock gloves as a tool to "de-escalate" conflicts in the street with targets of the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign, as well as protesters against the policy—it has said the gloves would be used to subdue those “actively or passively resisting” agents' commands.
In the wake of several fatal shootings by agents that lacked clear justification, the agency has described the gloves as a “low-impact tool” that will allow agents to avoid escalating to more extreme uses of force.
When politicians have called to restrict access to the gloves, ICE's parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), accused them of trying to deprive federal officers of "safety equipment."
The user manual of the GLOVE notes that the "pain stimulus" it delivers can produce psychological changes associated with sudden death, including increased blood pressure, heart rate, and adrenaline, as well as changes in blood chemistry and heart rhythm. It also notes that those shocked with the gloves could face serious injuries from falling after suddenly losing control of their extremities.
The manual recommends that the gloves not be used against older people, small children, people who are pregnant, and people with certain disabilities.
As Reagan Williams, a researcher at Human Rights Watch's Crisis, Conflict and Arms Division, noted in August, agency operations have regularly targeted these groups.
"Electric shock devices have long been abusively deployed around the globe, including as a method of torture and other ill-treatment. Given these risks, the European Union has implemented trade restrictions on these devices," Williams said. "The scale of this technology’s potential harm in the hands of ICE, an abusive agency whose recruits are deployed with minimal training, could be considerable."
Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, which provided the report to the AP, noted that while the Army report concluded the gloves were effective, it said little about their safety.
“The military assessment in ICE’s own files shows that these gloves can cause ‘intense pain’ and force compliance. It does not establish that they are safe,” Chukwu said. “Everyone should be alarmed that ICE is preparing to deploy a tool designed to inflict, at best, intense pain, without showing that it is safe for the people who will be subjected to it.”
While tasers can leave severe burns and welts on subjects, the shock gloves being adopted by ICE can deliver a painful shock without leaving a mark, making it much harder to prove their use. For law enforcement agencies, this is one of their most alluring features.
“I highly recommend these gloves to anybody that’s looking for a utility they can use that is conducive to not leading to lawsuits," said Bob Couey, chief deputy of the Floyd County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia, in a promotional video posted by Compliant Technologies in 2024 and resurfaced in August by Mother Jones.
Even a former ICE acting director, John Sandweg, has warned that because the gloves are so easy to use, agents might feel compelled to deploy them haphazardly.
“It’s too easy for this to get misused, against a population that doesn’t pose a threat,” Sandweg, who led the agency for about six months during the Obama administration, told MS NOW in August.
The gloves have drawn substantial criticism from Democratic members of Congress. In late August, Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) led a group of 49 members of the US House of Representatives to demand the contract be canceled.
“Introducing low-visibility electric shock weapons into our immigration enforcement system is an unacceptable escalation that prioritizes physical intimidation and unaccountable force over human safety and administrative accountability," they said in a letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
ICE, meanwhile, has been less than forthcoming about what guardrails will govern the use of the shock gloves. In late August, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and 15 other Democratic senators asked the agency to answer questions about how the gloves will be used, who they'll be used against, and whether it has conducted safety evaluations.
Cortez Masto told the AP that over a month later, the agency has not answered her and her colleagues' questions.
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Watchdogs Sue to Stop Wall Street's 'Pay-to-Play' Access to Trump Truth Posts
"This brazen scheme is illegal many times over and is an affront to the basic principle that the government exists to serve the people, not to enrich cronies and insiders," said their lawyer.
Sep 18, 2026
A pair of watchdog groups on Thursday sued President Donald Trump and other US officials over their "pay-to-play" scheme that gives subscribers who fork over a monthly fee of up to $100,000 early access to key decision-makers' posts on Truth Social.
The president's Trump Media & Technology Group announced the social media platform's program in July, drawing swift criticism from ethics experts and Democratic lawmakers—including House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who opened a probe. Despite corruption concerns, Truth Application Programming Interface (API) launched early last month.
Because Truth API covers the accounts of Trump, as well as White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel, they are all named in the new suit—as is the president's executive assistant, Natalie Harp.
"It is no accident that the Truth API covers so many official government accounts," says the complaint, filed by American Oversight and Campaign for Accountability, in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. "Information the Trump administration disseminates on Truth Social through its official accounts can have significant consequences for the global economy."
"Truth API subscribers—who now receive this potentially market-moving information before the rest of the public—can profit on their early knowledge of what the Trump administration says, does, and believes," the filing stresses.
In other words, "the president is selling Wall Street faster access to official government announcements and lining his own pockets in the process," said American Oversight executive director Chioma Chukwu. "Like so much of his agenda, this scheme is built to benefit the wealthy and well-connected while the rest of us are pushed to the back of the line."
Gerstein Harrow attorney Samuel Davis, who is representing the groups, declared that "this brazen scheme is illegal many times over and is an affront to the basic principle that the government exists to serve the people, not to enrich cronies and insiders."
Specifically, "this two-tier system of access" not only "serves no legitimate public purpose" but also "is irrational, inequitable, and illegal under the First and Fifth Amendments to the US Constitution and the Paperwork Reduction Act," the complaint argues. After outlining the alleged violations of federal law, the filing asks the court to declare the scheme unconstitutional and unlawful.
"If President Trump has one talent, it is finding new and creative ways to monetize his presidency," Campaign for Accountability executive director Michelle Kuppersmith said of the man who has pocketed at least $2.2 billion—over half of it from his family's cryptocurrency endeavors—during his first year back in the White House, according to recent disclosures.
"In another era, Congress would be outraged and take immediate action, but since that's out of the question, a lawsuit offers the only possible remedy," Kuppersmith continued. "We look forward to discovery so the American public can learn exactly which companies are willing to pay up."
The suit—filed less than two months ahead of the November midterm elections in which Democrats aim to take control of both chambers of Congress from Trump's Republican Party—is not the first filed over Trump API. The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) and the media outlet The Intercept sued last month in the Southern District of New York.
That pair—represented by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Yale Law School's Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, the Public Integrity Project, and Altshuler Berzon—filed a motion seeking a preliminary injunction earlier this month. The Intercept's CEO, Annie Chabel, said that "Trump doesn't get to charge people for his own public statements."
"The First Amendment doesn't have a paywall, and we're not going to let him build one," Chabel added. "Journalists and the public shouldn't have to pay the president for news he's constitutionally obligated to share with everyone."
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'RFK Jr. Lied to Congress': Criminal Probe Sought Over Samoa Trip Linked to 83 Measles Deaths
"He told us his Samoa trip had nothing to do with vaccines—now this letter shows that was false," Sen. Ed Markey said of President Donald Trump's health and human services secretary.
Aug 27, 2026
US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday faced calls for a criminal investigation after newly published documents appear to contradict his repeated testimony during Senate confirmation hearings that his 2019 trip to Samoa, which is linked to 83 measles deaths, “had nothing to do with vaccines.”
The advocacy group American Oversight on Thursday asked the US Department of Justice to investigate whether Kennedy knowingly made materially false statements during his 2025 Senate confirmation hearings. The request follows the publication of a January 2019 letter, signed by Kennedy and addressed to Samoa’s then-prime minister, Tuilaʻepa Saʻilele Malielegaoi, that explicitly proposed a vaccine-focused assessment of the Pacific island nation’s measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) program.
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeatedly testified before two separate Senate committees that his trip to Samoa had nothing to do with vaccines. But a letter he wrote to Samoa’s prime minister six years earlier appears to contradict that testimony,” American Oversight executive director Chioma Chukwu said Thursday in a statement.
“Congress relies on truthful testimony to do its job, particularly on matters as consequential as public health," Chukwu added. "If Kennedy lied to the Senate while seeking confirmation as the nation’s top health official, the Justice Department must investigate and hold him accountable.”
Questioned by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) before the Senate Finance Committee, Kennedy said his trip had “nothing to do with vaccines,” describing it instead as an effort to introduce a medical informatics system to digitize the nation's health records.
The following day, when Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) pressed him on the same issue before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Kennedy again said his trip had “nothing to do with vaccines.”
Markey's office released a statement Thursday noting that Kennedy "traveled to Samoa in 2019 to promote disinformation about the measles vaccine. Shortly after his trip, Samoa experienced a deadly outbreak of measles that killed over 80 people and has been attributed to mass vaccine disinformation."
My statement on new reporting that RFK Jr. lied to me in his Senate confirmation hearing.
[image or embed]
— Senator Ed Markey (@markey.senate.gov) August 27, 2026 at 1:47 PM
Of the 83 measles deaths during the outbreak, 72 were children under the age of 5. More than 1,860 hospitalizations in Samoa have been linked to the outbreak.
“New documents confirm what we already knew: RFK Jr. lied to Congress," Markey said. "He told us his Samoa trip had nothing to do with vaccines—now this letter shows that was false, just like it was false when he denied his role in the deadly outbreak that followed."
"This is a pattern, not a slip," he added. "RFK Jr. has lied to the Senate, lied to the American people, and jeopardized the health of children to advance his anti-vaccine agenda. He should never have been confirmed, and he cannot be trusted to run [the US Department of Health and Human Services] for even one more day."
Democratic Hawaii Gov. Josh Green, who is a physician, was invited by the Samoan government to help lead the measles response and recovery in the South Pacific archipelago.
“Misinformation and measles are a deadly combination—I saw that firsthand in Samoa," Green said on Thursday. "The truth is, this is a disease we know how to prevent. The MMR shot is the only proven and effective way to prevent the spread of measles."
"Vaccines save lives," he added. "Our public health decisions must be guided by doctors, scientists, and evidence—not conspiracy theories or political convenience. We owe it to every family to protect our children and communities, and make sure no one else dies from a preventable disease.”
The group 314 Action, which recruits, trains, and works to elect Democrats with expertise in science, published a statement Thursday noting that "now, America is facing its worst measles crisis in decades, and two more Americans have lost their lives to a disease we have long known how to prevent."
Public health experts have warned that the US is on track to lose its measles elimination status, which the country achieved in 2000, and blame the regression on declining vaccination driven by misinformation and conspiracy theories, including that vaccines are dangerous and even deadly.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order overhauling federal recommendations for children that calls for separating the MMR vaccine into three individual shots.
"The only thing ‘lethal’ about vaccines is listening to RFK Jr.’s lies about them," said 314 Action. "America needs more leaders like Gov. Green who are willing to stand up to Trump and RFK Jr. and put public health over politics. We won’t stop fighting until RFK Jr. is fired or removed from office.”
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