On Thursday's Morning Joe, co-host Mika Brzezinski fretted over DHS purchasing special shock gloves to assist ICE agents as she declared agents need the gloves because they are "stupid."
MS NOW's Morning Joe
October 8, 2026
7:01 a.m. Eastern
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: So a previously unreleased study by the U.S. Army confirms that electric shock gloves that were recently purchased by ICE work by inflicting intense pain and fear. Additionally, ICE leaders were aware of those findings before signing a $16.7 million contract to purchase 6,000 pairs of the gloves in August. That's according to records obtained by the watchdog group American Oversight and shared with the Associated Press. The 2024 study took place at a military prison in Kansas and found participants touched by the gloves, experienced, quote, "fatigue, soreness and excessive apprehensiveness to being shocked again."
ICE calls the gloves, quote, "distraction and de-escalation devices" that are safer than other non-lethal weapons to subdue people subject to arrest and deportation, as well as protesters who create civil disturbances. ICE argues that the gloves will help ensure quick compliance, thus helping keep agents safer and prevent the potential use of lethal force. Critics warn the gloves give ICE another weapon to intimidate and brutalize people.
And just saying, I don't think it's the ICE agents who are worried about being safe, and it's the people that they're bashing car windows to grab them and drag them out, pin them down on the ground, bend their legs back, injure them often killing them. So I don't know -- what, they can't operate their guns, so they have to get a shock glove because they're so stupid with their guns that they don't know the difference between a gun and a phone, and whether or not to walk in front of a car while it's moving. I don't know.
JONATHAN LEMIRE: Just so many questions raised about the inadequate training that so many of these new agents have received there, and now they're compensating with devices like this.
BRZEZINSKI: It's just the beginning of so many things that are so wrong with this situation and, in many cases, completely unlawful.
. steve malzberg
. steve malzberg
