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The White House border czar, Tom Homan, defended the plan by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to equip its agents with gloves capable of delivering painful electric shocks, asserting that it is a tool that will help his agents end confrontations without having to resort to lethal force.
“It’s another device to help get someone to comply when they are not doing so," Homan stated Thursday during an interview on Fox News Channel’s "Fox & Friends." "You can't go from 0 to 100, right?, and have the first thing you resort to be lethal force.”
Homan’s comments are the first public statements from a President Donald Trump administration official in defense of ICE’s plan to spend up to $20 million to acquire thousands of “distraction and de-escalation conductive devices” for agents.
The devices are known as G.L.O.V.E., an acronym for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, which are manufactured by Compliant Technologies LLC, a company based in Lexington, Kentucky. The devices have been used in recent years by some jails and police departments.
The plan has sparked harsh criticism from civil rights advocacy groups, Democratic lawmakers, and some experts on the use of force, who argue that ICE agents have resorted too quickly to the use of force while executing Trump's immigration crackdown. At least six people have been shot and killed by immigration agents since last year.
Homan argued that the gloves could help avoid those types of encounters. He noted that they would offer ICE agents a less-lethal option—similar to stun guns or pepper spray—to use in potentially violent situations on the streets and in detention centers. He added that “it will be a while” before agents in the field can use the gloves, because the agency is still in the process of defining training protocols and other matters.
Justin Hall, a jailer at the Nelson County Jail in Bardstown, Kentucky, said Thursday that his department began using the gloves four years ago to try to control unruly inmates. He indicated that, unlike stun guns, the shocks from the gloves do not incapacitate the suspect or knock them down. They also do not leave contact marks or burns.
Hall estimated that during his training he received shocks from the gloves more than 10 times and that the pain was intense, but it stops once they are removed from contact with the skin. He added that they have used the device moderately, but it is a good initial deterrent when de-escalation techniques do not work.
“It’s simply a safer way. It’s safer for the inmate. It’s safer for the staff. And most of the time we get them to comply," he explained. "It’s been a great tool for our facility.”
Geoffrey Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina who has written extensively about police use of force, stressed that broader studies should be conducted on these types of devices to ensure that agencies have the proper guidance on when and how they should be used. He considered that it would be more prudent for ICE to start with a smaller purchase, taking into account how little is known about them.
“You’re bulk-buying these types of devices for a group of agents who may not be trained in other strategies like de-escalation, nor trained to interact with the population in non-coercive ways, as most local police are,” he stressed. “User error is almost predictable at some level. The technology might be fine, but let’s take a moment to ensure that it is used appropriately.”
[Publicidad]