Controversy grows over ICE's plan to give agents Kentucky-made electric shock gloves

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Controversy surrounds Immigration and Customs Enforcement's plan to give agents electric shock gloves that are made in Kentucky.

The gloves are made in Kentucky by a company called Compliant Technologies. ICE plans to spend between $10 million and $20 million to outfit officers and agents with "conductive distraction and de-escalation devices," The Associated Press reported.

The devices known as the G.L.O.V.E., which stands for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, are normal patrol gloves until an officer presses a button that activates an electrical mode.

Civil rights organizations like ACLU Kentucky raises concerns about the use of the shock gloves, calling the equipment unnecessary and inhumane.

"There's all sorts of illegal activities and rights violations that ICE has been involved in," said Amber Duke, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky. "We cannot be naive, and to think that those are just going to be limited to folks in our immigrant populations."

Duke's heightened fears come at a time when there are already 37 ongoing legal cases accusing either ICE or border patrol in engaging in human and civil rights violations.

"I think that it's part of a very troubling trend that we'll see as more money is pumped into that agency," Duke said.

President Donald Trump's 2025 Big Beautiful Bill dumped over 74 billion dollars of additional funding into ICE. A reconciliation bill passed this June added another 70 billion dollars in combined funding to the pot for ICE and Customs and Border Protection

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday his concerns are not about the gloves existing or that there's a contract for them, but instead, that the equipment will be in the hands of ICE agents.

"It's that they are going to the worst trained, most aggressive law enforcement unit I have ever seen," Beshear said.

Beshear said every ICE agent needs to be taken offline and retrained, referencing several incidents where U.S. citizens have been killed by ICE agents.

White House Border Czar Tom Homan said investing millions into the gloves gives ICE agents more non-lethal force options.

"So, the glove is the latest thing they're looking at to help in situations," Homan said. "You've seen the videos in the past year and a half, the fights on the street where officers are overwhelmed."

In 2023, WDRB Investigates found that the gloves were already being used at 40 to 50 Kentucky agencies, mostly in jails. A former Bullitt County Jail inmate who was shocked with the gloves while in jail filed a lawsuit after the September 2022 incident. At the time the lawsuit was filed, the jail had already discontinued use of the gloves, pending a policy review.

While the manufacturer said the gloves shouldn't be used more than 15 seconds, Duke doesn't think they should be used at all.

"The Trump administration has continued to play really fast and loose," she said.

Duke fights two fronts, this new technology and local policies. She said it's been one year since Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg implemented the 48-hour ICE detainer request that requires the Louisville Metro Department of Corrections to hold immigrant inmates for 48 hours past their release date to give ICE an opportunity to pick them up for transfer into ICE custody.

The U.S. Attorney General's Office demanded that Louisville and several other cities classified as "sanctuary cities" implement the policy or face losses in federal funding.

"Louisville is the city that decided to capitulate to those threats," said Duke. "We've heard stories of people who have died in detention. People who are not receiving proper medical care in detention. So, I think that it's important as we look at a year of this policy that Louisville looks at its role in feeding people into that detention machine."

Greenberg's office said cities that did not comply have been targeted with mass ICE raids and indiscriminate deportations.

"After weighing the very real risks on all sides, the mayor continues to believe this decision offers the best path to keeping tens of thousands of immigrants who call Louisville home out of harm's way," a spokesperson for the mayor said in a statement.

Louisville's jail struggles with overcrowding. A check of the jail's population snapshot on Thursday showed the jail has 141 more inmates than what they have capacity for, and 59 of those inmates are on 48-hour immigration holds.

Duke said taxpayers are also responsible for paying for the continued care of every immigrant inmate's extended holding time at LMDC.

ACLU Kentucky has asked Greenberg to make information like the number of people held longer than their scheduled release, the number of people transferred from LMDC to ICE, additional jail time created by the policy and the cost of the policy to taxpayers public and accessible on LMDC's website.

Duke said this request has been repeatedly made since January.

WDRB asked the mayor's office if there is any reason why this information tracking hasn't been added to LMDC's public website.

The mayor's spokesperson did not provide an answer to our question.