White House border czar Tom Homan defends ICE electric shock gloves as tools to avoid deadly force
BARDSTOWN, Ky.— White House border czar Tom Homan defended Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s plan to give officers gloves that deliver painful electric shocks, calling them a tool to help officers end confrontations without using deadly force.“It’s another device to help someone get compliant when they are not,” Homan said Thursday in an interview on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends.” “You can’t just go from 0 to 100, right, and the first thing you go for is lethal force.”Homan’s remarks were the Trump administration’s first public defense of ICE’s plan to spend up to $20 million to purchase thousands of “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices” for officers and agents.
The devices are known as the G.L.O.V.E., which stands for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, and are manufactured by Compliant Technologies LLC.They have been used in recent years by some jails and police departments.The plan has drawn intense criticism from civil rights groups, Democrats in Congress, and some use-of-force experts, who say ICE agents have been too quick to use force while carrying out President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
At least six people have been shot and killed by immigration enforcement agents since last year, including motorists last month in Maine and Texas.Homan argued the gloves could help avoid such encounters.He said they would give another less lethal option to ICE officers, similar to Tasers or pepper spray, for use in potentially violent situations on the streets and in detention facilities.
He said that it would “be a while” before the gloves are deployed in the field by ICE officers because the agency is still working out training protocols and other policy issues.In Bardstown, Kentucky, Nelson County Jailer Justin Hall said Thursday that his agency began using the gloves four years ago to try to gain compliance when inmates are out of control.He said that, unlike Tasers, the sho...