Nelson County, Ky., jailer Justin Hall shows an electric shock glove that is used at his facility, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, in Bardstown, Ky.Dylan Lovan/AP Photo
In early August, ICE revealed plans to purchase $20 million worth of electric-shock gloves, manufactured by a company called Compliant Technologies. The gloves work on direct contact with exposed skin and deliver a painful electric charge. Police departments, jails, and even school resource officers across the country have used the gloves for years—though human rights groups like Amnesty International say they’re “readily misused for torture.” Police officers, speaking on Compliant Technologies’ own YouTube channel, repeatedly stated that the shock gloves work because they are “less conducive to lawsuits” than other forms of physical force, and can cause pain but “leave no burn marks or scars.”
The GLOVE, or Generated Low-Output Voltage Emitter, is already in use in some public schools. Twenty-nine of 34 school police officers in Omaha, Nebraska have trained to use the GLOVE, and twice in the past year, officers have used the devices to shock students.
Omaha requested 40 pairs of the gloves for just under $66,000 in 2025, as Nebraska Public Media reported. (At that same price point, ICE’s $20 million would buy the agency at least 12,000 pairs of shock gloves.) The Omaha city council unanimously approved the purchase. But with the gloves now under increased scrutiny, students and parents are raising concerns. School board members, at a meeting on August 17, said they hadn’t been informed that the shock gloves were being deployed in their schools.
“I personally am sickened to learn our schools have been used as a test bed for a new law enforcement technology,” Omaha School Board member Gini Magnuson said, according to Nebraska Public Media. The GLOVE’s most recent user manual suggests that wearers avoid using it against “small children.”
Despite the manufacturer’s warning against shocking children, Omaha is not the only school district to use shock gloves. Compliant Technologies regularly exhibits its products at School Resource Officer conferences nationwide. In July of this year, they were listed as an exhibitor at both the Texas and Mississippi Associations of School Resource Officers’ annual “school safety” conferences.
“I wish the adults in the room would actually just pay attention to what the students are saying, and hopefully understand that hurting students, and using weapons against them, is not what teaching is about, and it’s not what school is supposed to be about,” Omaha Central High School student Lux Tipton said at this week’s school board meeting.
While students, parents, and politicians speak out against these weapons, White House border czar Tom Homan is defending their use. “It’s another device to help someone get compliant when they are not,” Homan said in an interview last week on Fox & Friends. The Department of Homeland Security may distribute thousands of pairs of the gloves as early as March 2027.
