President Donald Trump’s administration is handing federal agents a “scary” new weapon to use against Americans, CNN’s Juliette Kayyem warned Wednesday.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and officers could soon be outfitted with gloves capable of delivering electric shocks, which the manufacturer claims would be used to de-escalate encounters, but Kayyem told “CNN News Central” these weapons could pose a real threat.
“ICE is not known for de-escalation,” she said. “The rules of engagement for ICE are not understood, and with this mandate from the White House of 2,000 arrests a day, you now have sort of issued ICE to sort of go around, touch people and zap them and say that they’re not compliant.”
“I’m going to be direct here,” Kayyem added. “We know ICE lies, they’ve been shown to lie. They have, and so this could be a real danger for the American public.”
ICE intends to spend up to $20 million to purchase the Generated Low Output Voltage Emitters, according to a notice published Monday by the Department of Homeland Security.
The devices would be delivered by the end of March 2027.
The gloves carry a low-output voltage emitter with a simple on-off switch, Kayyem said, meaning a person touched by an agent may feel nothing until it’s activated, at which point the wearer can deliver a jolt described as an intense bee sting for up to 15 seconds.
Based on public records, the devices have mostly been deployed in confined settings like jails, where detainees have little freedom of movement — a context, she said, where their use “may make sense.”
Handing the same tool to ICE agents operating among the general public is a different matter entirely, Kayyem argued.
Kayyem argued a quota imposed by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and the president shows that ICE has strayed from its core mission.
“These guys and women who have been on boarded with less training, support, less rule, fewer rules of engagement,” she said. “So giving them a new tool is dangerous with this mandate.”
The White House’s promise to target “the worst of the worst” is “so clearly not true anymore,” she said.
Kayyem concluded, “It’s the combination of the mandate with the resources that has become the sort of scary aspect of ICE for most of the American public.”
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