A group of House Democrats on Monday demanded the immediate cancellation of a nearly $17 million federal contract to provide electric shock gloves to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who have been unleashed on American cities…
Page F8From§Eachthe early bird edition — 31 August 2026
Congress proposes biometric screening for travelers while ICE signs a $17 million contract for electric shock gloves.
As it ran on the front
Two filings landed this week. The first is a House Intelligence Committee recommendation that international travelers undergo biometric screening, cited as necessary to prevent another September 11th. The second is a $17 million contract, already signed, to equip ICE agents with electric shock gloves, a contract congressional Democrats are now asking the agency to cancel. Running these as one ledger produces a total, not a comparison: two entries, both under the heading of security spending, both landing in the same fiscal year, neither one reconciled against the other in any public document I can find.
The biometric screening recommendation carries no dollar figure yet; it is a policy ask, not an appropriation, and the filing does not say who builds the scanners or who gets the contract when it becomes one. That's worth flagging, because contracts of this kind tend to go to a short list of vendors, and the short list tends to show up again in the campaign finance filings the following cycle. I am not saying that happens here. I am saying that is the pattern the last several scanner contracts followed, and the filing is silent on whether this one will differ.…
…(cont) The glove contract has a number: $17,000,000, awarded, under review, contested by members of Congress who have not yet succeeded in cancelling it. Electric shock gloves are not, as of this filing, standard equipment at any other domestic law enforcement agency at this scale. The itemized cost per unit is not public. The oversight hearing has not been scheduled.
Put the two entries side by side, hon: one is a recommendation to scan travelers for the next threat, the other is a signed check for a piece of restraint equipment for the agency processing people already inside the country. Both get filed under the same word, security. The word covers a lot of ground. The two line items covered by that word, this week, come to at least $17 million, with the travelers' number still pending, and the gap between a recommendation and a signed contract is the gap between an idea and a bill somebody already paid.
“Biometric scanners for tourists and $17 million worth of shock gloves for ICE, both filed under 'security,' and only one of those two is actually being used on people already here. That's not prevention, that's procurement, and somebody's cashing that seventeen million whether or not Congress ever cancels it.”
“Biometric screening keeps the traveling public safe, full stop, that's a border security no-brainer. The ICE glove contract is a standard equipment upgrade for officer safety, which — I'll grant — doesn't explain the seventeen million dollar figure, or why members of Congress are asking us to cancel a contract we're calling routine.”
The receipts
The panel urged the change in a 66-page report drafted by Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), focused on implementing 9/11 Commission recommendations ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.