In August, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement awarded a $16.7 million no-bid contract for 6,000 pairs of electric-shock gloves. The Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, abbreviated as G.L.O.V.E., can be activated by an officer against bare skin, delivering pulses of up to 380 volts—more than three times the voltage of a standard U.S. wall outlet. ICE says the gloves give officers another way to control people in close settings while supposedly avoiding more serious or lethal force. They’re manufactured by a company called Compliant Technologies, because subtlety is dead in our current political environment.
The gloves arrive at a strange moment in the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown. ICE arrests surged to nearly 51,000 in August. From June to August, ICE set arrest records. But deportations haven’t followed that trend. They’ve plateaued around 1,200 per day, roughly the same pace as May 2026, when ICE made about 32,000 arrests. There are many reasons for this gap: asylum claims, court proceedings, diplomatic issues with receiving countries. But the gap also makes the continued buildup of ICE’s arrest-and-detention machinery more revealing. If they are not getting better at the deportation part of their mass deportation campaign, what exactly is all this additional force accomplishing?
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