California Moves to Block ICE Shock Gloves as Sacramento Escalates Fight With Federal Immigration Enforcement

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California lawmakers are moving at breakneck speed to block law-enforcement officers — including federal immigration agents — from using a new electric-shock glove designed to subdue combative suspects, opening another direct confrontation between Sacramento and Washington over immigration enforcement.

Assembly Bill 2760 would prohibit law-enforcement agencies from using so-called wearable electroshock devices in California. The measure was amended on August 21 to specifically address the technology and explicitly reaches federal law-enforcement agencies operating inside the state.

The timing is no accident.

The Department of Homeland Security is considering spending between $10 million and $20 million to acquire thousands of G.L.O.V.E. devices — short for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter — for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and agents. Federal acquisition documents describe the equipment as a “conductive distraction and de-escalation device.”

When activated, the glove can deliver an electrical pulse through contact with a person’s skin. The technology is intended to give officers another method of gaining control of a resisting or combative individual without immediately escalating to more dangerous levels of force.

But in California, the political machinery is already moving to shut the door before ICE agents can deploy it.

Democratic Assemblymember LaShae Sharp-Collins is carrying AB 2760, while fellow Democrat Alex Lee has attacked the technology as a potential instrument for abuse. Lee previously described the device as “gross” and argued that it could be used to hurt people unnecessarily.

Sacramento lawmakers are also racing against the calendar. The California Senate voted 30-9 Monday to suspend legislative rules that otherwise could have prevented the newly rewritten proposal from advancing before the August 31 deadline. As of the latest available legislative reporting, the bill remained before the Senate Rules Committee.

That fast-track maneuver turns what might have been a routine debate over police equipment into something much larger: another battle over whether California can place obstacles in the path of federal immigration officers carrying out federal law.

Republican Assemblymember Joe Patterson has already questioned whether Sacramento possesses the authority lawmakers appear determined to exercise.

Patterson told CBS Sacramento that California cannot simply regulate ICE or the federal government, pointing to the constitutional limits on state power over federal agencies.

That could ultimately become the heart of the fight.

California can establish rules for its own police agencies, restrict state spending and dictate state use-of-force policies. Attempting to tell federal officers what equipment they may carry while enforcing federal immigration law is a far more aggressive proposition — and one that could invite a serious constitutional challenge.

The clash also exposes a contradiction at the center of the debate.

Critics are warning that the gloves could cause excessive pain or be misused. Those concerns deserve scrutiny, and any agency deploying electrical force should have strict training, documentation and accountability requirements.

But the technology is also being presented as an alternative to more severe force. DHS says it continually evaluates equipment intended to help officers safely arrest and remove people while ensuring any technology used complies with law-enforcement standards.

If an officer is wrestling with a violent or actively resisting suspect, policymakers cannot pretend the alternative is simply doing nothing.

Police and federal agents have to make split-second decisions. The practical question is whether an electric-contact device, properly regulated and used under defined circumstances, gives officers another option before a confrontation escalates to a baton, Taser, firearm or prolonged physical struggle.

California's response so far is not to demand tougher safeguards.

It is moving toward prohibition.

And that is precisely why this dispute is becoming another flashpoint in the wider immigration war.

For years, California officials have pushed policies designed to distance state and local institutions from federal immigration enforcement. Now lawmakers are going further, attempting to determine what equipment federal immigration officers themselves can use while operating within California's borders.

The message from Sacramento is unmistakable: when Washington strengthens immigration enforcement, California will search for another way to restrict it.

Whether the courts allow the state to go that far is another question entirely.

For ICE officers confronting suspects in the field, however, the debate is not theoretical. Federal agents are being asked to arrest and remove people who may flee, resist or become violent. Washington is looking for additional tools to accomplish that mission.

California is looking for ways to take one of those tools away.

And with the legislative clock running toward August 31, the fight is moving fast.