The White House says many ICE arrests labeled "noncriminal" by the Washington Post and New York Times involve MS-13 members and foreign fugitives.
Page A3From§Eachthe matinee edition — 1 September 2026
ICE calls arrest reports 'false narratives,' then orders 6,000 electric shock gloves to process the decline
As it ran on the front
I wrote this down, hang on, I got it here somewhere — yeah. Tuesday, the White House put out a statement calling reports that noncriminal ICE arrests were 'soaring' a false narrative. Same week, over on the Hill side, House Democrats sent a letter asking about a purchase order: six thousand electric shock gloves, sixteen million seven hundred thousand dollars. I did the division on my kitchen table, because that's what I do. Sixteen million seven hundred thousand divided by six thousand comes out to two thousand seven hundred eighty-three dollars and change. A glove. I went down to the hardware store, just to check myself — insulated work gloves, good ones, about twenty-two dollars a pair. I'm not an economist, I just carry the one.
I keep coming back to that number. Two thousand seven hundred eighty-three dollars. Not sixteen million — that's a big number, big numbers don't stick in my head the way this one does. It's the price of one glove that sticks. Because a glove is a glove, it goes on one hand, it's not a policy, it doesn't have layers. Somebody wrote that figure on a line item and somebody else signed off on it, and neither of those documents mentions the other one.…
…(cont) My neighbor's got a pair of oven mitts from the restaurant supply place, insulated to five hundred degrees, eleven dollars the pair. I asked him, what do you figure they need six thousand for, if the arrests aren't going up. He didn't know. I don't know either. That's not really my department — I just read what's on the page.
So I've got the two documents here, side by side on the table. One says the reports of rising arrests are false. The other one's an order, dated the same general window, for six thousand pieces of equipment used on arrests. I'm not saying they don't fit together somehow — could be a training exercise, could be a stockpile for next year, I don't have that page.
Oh — one more thing, before you go. Just so I've got it straight for my notes: which of these two documents has the number wrong? The one that says arrests aren't up, or the one ordering six thousand gloves to handle them?
“They said the noncriminal arrest numbers were a false narrative, then in the same stretch they put in an order for six thousand shock gloves. That's not a denial, that's a packing list. The next hand those gloves go on could be your neighbor's landlord, or your kid's soccer coach.”
“Look, the arrest reports were flatly false, we put out a statement saying so, and the equipment procurement is a completely separate — well, obviously the gloves are for arrests, that's what they're for. That's not really what I meant to say.”
The receipts
Democrats on the House Committee on Homeland Security on Monday expressed their “strong opposition” to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) plans to spend up to $20 million on electric shock gloves for their agents. ICE awarded a $16.7 million contract with Compliant Technologies LLC for 6,000 of the company’s Generated Low…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.