U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is preparing to spend as much as $20 million equipping officers with gloves that deliver an electric shock on contact, according to procurement documents the Department of Homeland Security posted this month.

The device, known as the G.L.O.V.E. — short for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter — is made by Compliant Technologies, a veteran-owned company based in Lexington, Kentucky. Unlike a taser, it has no prongs and requires no distance; an officer wearing the glove activates a small button at the wrist, and the shock is delivered the instant the glove touches bare skin.

DHS has described the purchase as being for "conductive distraction and de-escalation devices," and the Associated Press first reported the plan after DHS quietly posted the procurement notice. The agency is aiming to have the gloves in officers' hands by March.

"It Made My Knees Buckle"

The gloves are not new technology — similar devices are already used in some jails, prisons, hospitals and more than 50 police departments across roughly 20 states, and at least one school district has purchased them for staff. Kenneth Corey, a former senior NYPD official now at the University of Chicago, described being shocked with the device during testing: "It hurt. It made my knees buckle."

"WHY WOULD YOU GIVE THIS KIND OF NOVEL, DANGEROUS TECHNOLOGY... TO AGENCY PERSONNEL WITH A TRACK RECORD OF ABUSE?"

That question, posed by Naureen Shah, a director at the American Civil Liberties Union, captures the core of the pushback. The ACLU has spent months documenting what it describes as widespread use-of-force incidents during ICE's expanded enforcement operations, including hundreds of taser deployments, and argues that officers who deliver a shock with no advance warning — and no chance for a subject to comply first — face an unacceptable risk of injury from a technology with little independent safety testing in the field.

ICE has not detailed what training officers would receive before carrying the gloves, or under what specific circumstances their use would be authorized. A department spokesperson pointed only to the procurement notice when NPR sought comment on the plan this week.

The purchase comes amid a broader expansion of ICE's enforcement footprint and equipment budget this year, and it is likely to draw scrutiny from congressional Democrats and civil liberties groups in the coming weeks as the procurement process moves forward. CBS News reported that DHS has not yet finalized which field offices would receive the devices first.