WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Plans to equip United States (US) immigration enforcement agents with gloves capable of delivering debilitating electric shocks have fueled concerns over potential abuses by a force that critics say is already over-zealous and under-trained.

“As if assaulting people and shooting people in the streets wasn’t enough,” Representative Maxwell Frost, a Democrat from Florida, said on X. “Now, they’re spending $20 million of YOUR taxpayer dollars on painful electric shock gloves for their masked, lawless goons.”

“ICE must be stopped,” Frost said in a reference to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency primarily charged with carrying out President Donald Trump’s plan to deport millions of undocumented migrants.

ICE has come in for criticism for a series of fatal shootings during enforcement operations, including those of two American citizens in Minnesota in January who were involved in anti-ICE protests.

Critics have focused on the forceful tactics used by ICE agents in rounding up migrants and on an alleged lowering of the standards of training for new recruits.

The plan to purchase the shock gloves, which was first reported by The Associated Press, calls for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the ICE parent agency, to spend $10 to $20 million on what are described as “distraction and de-escalation” devices.

The G.L.O.V.E., or Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, is made by Compliant Technologies, a company based in Kentucky that bills itself on its website as a supplier of “cutting-edge non-lethal tools to empower and protect those who serve.”

The G.L.O.V.E. delivers a shock that is not as strong as that of a Taser, another device used by law enforcement to subdue suspects.

In response to queries about the gloves, DHS said ICE is “constantly assessing the needs of our officers in the field to ensure they have the tools and equipment necessary to safely arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens from our country.”

“Every decision is made with careful consideration and appropriately reviewed to ensure that any technology ICE utilises is consistent with all applicable law enforcement policies and standards,” DHS said in a statement.

John Sandweg, who served as the acting ICE director under Democratic president Barack Obama, said in an interview with MS NOW that ICE agents have an “incredibly difficult job” but expressed concerns about the electric gloves.

“Deploying this admittedly less than lethal technology, in an era when we’re really not all that interested in providing training to the officers about how to use that technology, really is alarming,” Sandweg said.

“It doesn’t take a big stretch of the imagination to seeing this technology being deployed against a mother who’s just maybe putting up the most mild resistance because she’s being separated from her children,” he said. “It’s too easy for this to get misused against a population that doesn’t pose a threat.”

Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington state, expressed similar concerns.

“ICE has targeted legal observers, protestors, and just ordinary people on their way to work or to drop their kid off at school,” Jayapal said on X. “This won’t make anyone safer and in fact just gives ICE another dangerous tool to target citizens and immigrants alike.”

The American Civil Liberties Union announced last month that it has filed more than 50 claims against the federal government on behalf of people and families allegedly harmed by federal immigration actions in 17 states and in Washington, the nation’s capital.

ICE arrested more than 51,000 people for immigration violations across the country in July, according to US media reports citing DHS sources, the most in a single month since Trump took office in January of last year.