LUAC demands an immediate pause on Shock Gloves

LULAC DEMANDS AN IMMEDIATE PAUSE ON SHOCK GLOVES, FULL-BODY RESTRAINTS AND ANY NEW USE-OF-FORCE EQUIPMENT FOR IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT

Nation's oldest and largest Latino civil rights organization asks the questions no one in authority has answered: Where are the rules published, who wrote them, who enforces them, and why is equipment arriving faster than training, policy and accountability?

WASHINGTON — The League of United Latin American Citizens today called on the Department of Homeland Security to suspend the acquisition and field deployment of new use-of-force equipment for immigration enforcement, and called on Congress to convene immediate oversight hearings until DHS publishes the written policies, training standards, medical protocols and accountability procedures that govern federal immigration officers operating in American communities.

"Members of Congress do not have to agree with LULAC on immigration policy to agree on this: a federal officer operating on an American street should be bound by a written rule the public is permitted to read, trained to a standard the public can verify, and answerable to an authority outside his own chain of command," states Roman Palomares, LULAC National President and Chairman of the Board.

In the current enforcement environment, equipment is being procured before policy is published, deployed before training is verified, and used before any independent body has been given the authority to review the results. That sequence is backward, and it is being applied to human beings on public streets.

"Equipment is not a solution. Equipment without training, without a published policy, without supervision and without consequence is a liability wearing a badge," states Juan Proaño, LULAC CEO. "The body camera was the tool this agency told the American people it was buying, and the American people are still waiting to see what it records. We should be training officers on the tools they already have before we hand them new ones that have never been tested in this application, on this population, at this scale."

ICE plans to spend up to $20 million to purchase thousands of electrified gloves for officers and agents by March 2027. The manufacturer's own guidance warns that the device should not be used as punishment, should not be used against people who are merely verbally defiant or belligerent, and should not be used on children, pregnant women, or elderly or disabled people. LULAC asks a plain question: In a street encounter, at night, with a masked officer and a frightened family, who determines that a person is not pregnant, not elderly, not disabled, and not medically fragile, and by what written standard?

Also, ICE is now using a full-body restraint device known as the WRAP on people already shackled, in some cases for hours. More than a dozen fatal cases are documented over the past decade in which local police or jailers used the device and autopsies determined restraint played a role in the death. A separate investigation cited in congressional filings identified 41 deaths following law enforcement use of the device over 10 years. In February 2026, LULAC joined U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez, the National Immigration Law Center, the American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations in support of the Full Body Restraint Prohibition Act, which would bar DHS components from purchasing or using such devices.

"Accountability by armed agents of the law is not a partisan proposition," says Palomares. "That is the minimum condition of policing in a constitutional republic. We are asking Congress to exercise the oversight authority it already possesses — to hold hearings, to demand the policies, to review the contracts and to pause this procurement until those answers exist. If Congress will not ask these questions now, it will be asked a far harder question later: why didn't you?"

LULAC calls for revision of the ICE body-worn camera release standard to a public-interest standard rather than an agency-interest standard; and public, recurring reporting of use-of-force data by field office. A nation that solves accountability problems by buying new equipment has not solved anything. It has only moved the consequences further from public view.