The Department of Homeland Security plans to spend $20 million to equip Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents with gloves that can deliver an electric shock, and a law enforcement officer’s recently unearthed admission left multiple immigration advocates stunned on Saturday.
In 2024, Adam Glueck, then assistant chief of police for the Cape Girardeau Police Department in Missouri, spoke on a video podcast about his agency having recently purchased electric shock gloves for its officers, and flagged what he characterized as a benefit of using the technology.
“In today’s society, you know, everybody’s filming everything, everybody has a cell phone,” Glueck said, according to a report from Mother Jones, which unearthed the video. “[But] the glove is low optic, and it looks better on camera, and it looks better to those witnesses. With a glove, there are no burn marks or scars.”
Mother Jones also flagged remarks from Bob Couey, chief deputy for the Floyd County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia, who in a 2024 video that’s been viewed less than 400 times praised electric shock gloves as well.
“I highly recommend these gloves to anybody that’s looking for a utility they can use that is conducive to not leading to lawsuits,” Couey can be heard saying on video, also unearthed by Mother Jones.
Responding to Glueck and Couey’s recently unearthed remarks, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, was left stunned.
“Proponents of the ICE taser gloves are openly saying that one reason they love the gloves is that they [don't] leave any marks or proof that they were used, making it harder for people to sue when they’re shocked excessively,” Reichlin-Melnick wrote Saturday in a social media post on X.
Thomas Kennedy, a Florida-based writer and immigration advocate, was also left stunned by Glueck and Couey’s remarks, calling it “sadistic stuff.”
“The gloves ICE wants to purchase for tens of millions of dollars that can deliver electric shocks allow the wearer to inflict pain without leaving the sort of marks that look bad to witnesses or leave an officer vulnerable to lawsuits,” Kennedy wrote Saturday. “Sadistic stuff.”
Wow. Proponents of the ICE taser gloves are openly saying that one reason they love the gloves is that they doesn’t leave any marks or proof that they were used, making it harder for people to sue when they’re shocked excessively. https://t.co/A1mrIWwIocpic.twitter.com/wdGrwFk4GN
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) August 15, 2026