Shock gloves on immigrants? Trump gifts his deportation goons a cowardly new tool
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It’s come to this: pain gloves.
Just when President Trump’s efforts to deport immigrants his administration deems not the right kind — and you’re deluding yourself if you think it’s all about legality — news came this week that Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants to spend up to $20 million on electrically charged gloves so that its agents can more easily subdue people.
All they got to do is fiddle around on their gloves a la Iron Man to turn them on, place their hands on the local fruit lady or taco guy, and voilà! The person crumbles to the ground and gets hauled off to the hoosegow.
The official notice announcing the planned purchase describe the equipment as “a Conductive Distraction and De-escalation Device,” but let’s call it what it is:
Pain gloves. And: Cowardly.
The Department of Homeland Security plans to spend up to $20 million on gloves that deliver painful shocks to detainees.
The malicious mitts are just one item in the shopping cart of a xenophobic spending spree that the Trump administration can indulge in thanks to a new budget for immigration enforcement approved by Congress in June that surpasses the military spending of most countries. In August alone, a toxic alphabet soup of agencies — ICE, CBP, HSI, CIS and others — put out notices that they plan to spend up to $1.8 billion to shore themselves up.
Included in the wish list: $3 million on 9-mm Luger ammunition and $2 million for Glock pistols and accompanying modifications; $1 million for the renovation and rental of indoor firing ranges; $2 million in defibrillators. Over $100 million toward “Nonscheduled Chartered Passenger Air Transportation” just for immigrants who choose to self-deport. Over $300 million for new Border Patrol stations to replace three existing ones in Texas. A five-year contract worth up to $50 million to create Border Patrol propaganda “across various media channels.”
And just in case any of this weighs on the hearts and minds of Border Patrol higher-ups, the agency wants to spend up to $1 million for “four quarterly, five-day wellness workshops” at its headquarters emphasizing “nutrition, sleep hygiene, stress management” and other mental health issues.
May I suggest a workshop on growing a conscience? Maybe one on how to not crash out when protesters or witnesses pull out a phone to shoot video, as is their constitutional right? Or how about a PowerPoint presentation simply called “How to Not Act Like a Goon With a Badge”?
So now that pain gloves are on the menu, what’s next for Trump’s deportation deluge? Uniforms that sprout porcupine quills at the tug of a collar? Spider-Man web-slinging capabilities? Magneto-type helmets so activists can’t read the minds of la migra? (Actually, that’s kind of happening: ICE wants to spend up to $1 million on helmets for a new tactical team called DAGr, which also wants $1 million to buy night vision goggles.)
“Every decision is made with careful consideration and appropriately reviewed to make sure that any technology ICE utilizes is consistent with all applicable law enforcement policies and standards,” Homeland Security told The Times in justifying the gloves, which its makers caution shouldn’t be used on children, pregnant women or folks with heart conditions. “Our officers are highly trained in de-escalation techniques.”
Excuse me while I collapse — not from some migra man buzzing me with their new toy, but from laughter.
Trump has spent all of his second term trying to equip and fashion immigration agents as a new warrior class, and they have responded accordingly. His wannabe Robocops launch indiscriminate raids, operate detention facilities under conditions out of a Dickens novel and regularly don face masks to hide their identities. They toss out racial slurs to ridicule detainees the way the rest of us use nouns, threaten bystanders with guns for looking at them funny and even arrest American citizens who they think got in their way or whom they mistook for someone in the country illegally.
But this tyrannical posturing reminds me not of some low-rent X-Men film but rather Syndrome, the villain in the Pixar classic “The Incredibles.”
The dweeb so desperately wanted to be a superhero that he launches a war against real ones in order to turn their powers into weapons he then sells to a gullible public. Syndrome eventually captures the animated film’s titular Mr. Incredible and tells him how he’s going to unleash a monster on a city so Syndrome can save residents and thus earn the public accolades he so desperately wanted to receive.
“I’ll be a bigger hero than you ever were!” Syndrome boasts to Mr. Incredible.
Spoiler alert: He wasn’t. And neither will Trump’s borderlands berzerkers.
Despite more immigrants being arrested in July than any other month in Homeland Security’s history, good Americans refuse to submit to Trump’s roundup reverie. That gets him and his agents mad. The man who orders monuments to himself like a North Korean dictator only thinks he’s a king — or a God — but the cruelty Trump is willing to unleash is all too real.
And, always, beware tyrants who are scared.
That’s why those electrified gloves that ICE wants are so telling.
It’s an acknowledgment that agents can’t effectively do their job. It shows how the Trump administration really thinks anyone who opposes them is little better than livestock in need of a cattle prod. It’s a bully confessing that he’s scared.
God knows, Trump must have gotten an advance order of the pain gloves for his itty-bitty hands almost two years ago, the way he’s been inflicting hurt and ignominy on our country ever since.
It’s the coward’s way. It’s cruel and juvenile. And Americans had best take heed of a man-child president and his band of thugs at all levels of government who embody that line from “King Lear”:
“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.”
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The column argues that electrically charged gloves for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are “pain gloves” that embody a cowardly and xenophobic approach to immigration enforcement, turning routine encounters with immigrants and bystanders into opportunities to inflict pain rather than to resolve situations peacefully.
The piece contends that the shock gloves are part of a broader escalation made possible by new, multi-year immigration enforcement budgets that direct roughly $70 billion to the Department of Homeland Security, including about $38 billion for ICE and $26 billion for Customs and Border Protection, dramatically expanding the resources available for arrests, detention and removal.[1][2][6][10]
The column argues that, instead of investing in programs that reduce detention or improve oversight, lawmakers and agencies are channeling funds into weapons, tactical gear, expanded facilities, transportation for deportations and specialized enforcement teams, reinforcing a system that prioritizes force and incapacitation over humane treatment.[2][4][6][10]
The article suggests that describing the gloves as “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices” is a euphemism that masks their core purpose: to deliver painful electric shocks that cause people to crumple, signaling that agents cannot do their jobs without treating immigrants and dissenters as bodies to be subdued rather than rights-bearing individuals.[5][7][8][9]
The column describes ICE and Border Patrol personnel as a self-styled “warrior class,” accusing them of indiscriminate raids, Dickensian detention conditions, routine masking to hide identities and casual use of slurs, and argues that the push for shock gloves fits into a culture that normalizes cruelty and erodes constitutional protections for both immigrants and citizens.
The piece highlights civil rights advocates’ warnings that ICE already has a record of using force with limited accountability, and that giving agents gloves capable of covert shocks—devices that have been linked in lawsuits to serious injuries and a death when misused—raises the risk of abuse against vulnerable people encountered in civil immigration enforcement.[5][7][8]
The column ultimately portrays the gloves and the broader enforcement spending spree as evidence of an administration that views opponents and immigrants as less than human, likening Trump’s agents to cartoon villains and literary tyrants, and urges readers to see the adoption of pain-inducing technology as a confession of fear and a dangerous step toward treating people “as flies to wanton boys.”
Different views on the topic
Supporters within the Department of Homeland Security describe the electrified gloves as “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices” intended to help officers safely gain control of combative individuals, emphasizing that every technology decision is reviewed to ensure consistency with law enforcement policies and standards.[5][7][8]
Agency communications and product information stress that officers who use the G.L.O.V.E. must undergo training and periodic certification, and supporters argue that structured training and clear protocols can limit misuse and integrate the gloves into a broader continuum of force options.[8][9]
ICE and the manufacturer characterize the devices as nonlethal tools that are safe for the heart when used correctly, presenting them as a less extreme alternative to firearms or high-voltage Tasers and asserting that localized shocks, applied for short periods, are meant to gain compliance without causing lasting physical harm.[5][7][8]
The gloves’ user manual, cited in public reporting, warns against use on the elderly, children, pregnant women and those with serious disabilities, and forbids deployment as punishment or in response to mere verbal defiance, which proponents point to as evidence that safeguards and limitations are built into the technology’s design and official guidance.[5][7][8]
Republican backers of the Secure America Act and related funding bills argue that large, multi-year appropriations for ICE and CBP are necessary to give immigration agencies the personnel, equipment and transportation capacity to enforce existing law and pursue Trump’s stated objective of deporting large numbers of people without lawful status.[1][2][3][10]
Supporters of front-loading nearly $70 billion in immigration enforcement funds emphasize that locking in money through 2029 ensures uninterrupted operations, allows agencies to plan long-term investments in facilities and technology and reduces the risk that future political fights could abruptly disrupt deportation and border control efforts.[1][2][3][6]
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