In “Invisible Man,” Ralph Ellison foresaw ICE’s “Electric Shock Gloves,” and the newest version of the White Man’s sport of Electrocuting Black & Brown Boys.

Steve Villano

Aug 15, 2026

(ICE’s new “Electric Gloves”. The “Conductive Distraction and De-escalation devices” manufactured by Compliant Technologies can cause a person to drop to the ground in pain with one touch.Mother Jones illustration; GLOVE user manual/Compliant Technologies.)

The writer Ralph Ellison was 74 years ahead of his time.

In his National Book Award winning work “Invisible Man,” (Random House, NY, NY, 1952), Ellison detailed the joy white supremacists got from giving electric shocks to Black and Brown men.

That may explain why the white supremacists running the Trump Administration, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE (in their veins), are having multiple orgasms over their new “Electric Shock GLOVES,” meant to “harm people and avoid being sued,” as the investigative reporting magazine Mother Jones reports in its newest issue (“The Orwellian Company Behind ICE’s New Electric Shock Gloves,” by Sophie Hurwitz.

Mother Jones directly quotes the CEO of Compliant Technologies, Jeff Niklaus, from a 2022 YouTube promotional video:

“We have a saying, ‘Feeling is Believing.”

Hurwitz points out that “in promotional clips, you can see people losing control of their limbs, falling to the ground, and crying out in pain after a light touch from the GLOVE. In 2022, the company called it a “weapon” in Instagram posts.”

Mother Jones goes on to quote Assistant Chief Adam Glueck, of the Cape Girardeau Police Department in southeastern Missouri, which purchased electric shock gloves for the Girardeau PD officers.

“In today’s society, you know, everybody is filming everything; everyone has a cellphone,” Hurwitz quoted Glueck as saying. “If an officer punches someone on camera, that can go viral in an instant; even a standard taser leaves puncture wounds. But “the glove is low optic, and it looks better on camera, and it looks better to those witnesses. With a glove, there are no burn marks or scars.”

I read these chilling quotes when the news hit about ICE buying $10 million of these portable electric chairs for its abusive agents to use on humans and my mind immediately recalled the opening chapter of Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” where the legendary Black writer described an electric shock torture devised by the White elites of a southern town to use on young Black athletes.

Ellison’s eloquent, and electrifying, account was told through the eyes of a young, bright Black character who earned a college scholarship and was informed that in order to pick up the scholarship he had to perform certain “puglistic entertainment,” along with nine other well-built Black men, for the enjoyment of the rich, white, powerful and inebriated audience:

“ All of the town’s big shots were there in their tuxedos, wolfing down buffet foods, drinking beer and whiskey and smoking black cigars. It was a large room with a high ceiling. Chairs were arranged in neat rows around three sides of a portable boxing ring. The fourth side was clear, revealing a gleaming space of polished floor.”

“We were a small tight group, clustered together, our bare upper bodies touching and shining with anticipatory sweat, while up front the big shots were becoming increasingly excited… Suddenly, I heard the School Superintendent, who told me to come, yell, ‘Bring up the Shines, gentlemen! ‘Bring up the little Shines!”

“We were ordered to get into the ring…All 10 of us climbed under the ropes and allowed ourselves to be blindfolded, with broad bands of white cloth…I felt a sudden fit of blind terror …I stood against the ropes trembling… it seemed as if all nine of the boys had turned upon me at once…

“Everybody fought everybody else…I heard one boy scream in pain as he smashed his hand against a ring post…The (White) men kept yelling: ‘Slug him, black boy! Knock his guts out! Uppercut him! Kill him! Kill that big boy!’

But, as Ellison wrote, the even more dehumanizing and shocking part of the night’s entertainment for the White supremacists— bankers, lawyers, judges, doctors, fire chiefs, teachers, merchants and pastors — all dressed in tuxedos, was yet to come.

The screaming, rich, racist White men “rolled away the portable boxing ring, and set up a small square rug in the vacant space surrounded by chairs. An emcee gave the signal for the young, Black men to “come and get your money,” a collection of gold, coins and a few crumpled bills tossed in the middle of the rug.

“As told, we got around the square rug on our knees. ‘Ready, Go!’ the emcee said. I lunged for a yellow coin lying on a blue design of the carpet, touching it …A hot, violent force tore through my body, shaking me like a wet rat. The rug was electrified…my muscles jumped, my nerves jangled, writhed…

“Suddenly, I saw a boy lifted in the air, glistening with sweat like a circus seal, and dropped, his wet back landing flush upon the charged rug, heard him yell, and saw him literally dance upon his back, his elbows beating a frenzied tattoo upon the floor, his muscles twitching like the flesh of a horse stung by too many flies… his face was gray and no one stopped him when he ran from the floor, amid booming laughter,” of the White Supremacists who took great pleasure in administering pain to these Black boys.

The horrific scene from Ellison’s Invisible Man could be right out a training video for the perversely named company, “Compliant Technology.”

As Mother Jones reports:

Human rights organizations like Amnesty International have long raised concerns about electric shock devices like the GLOVE, as well as other products that Compliant Technologies sells, like electric shock belts and vests, which the company recommends for prisoner transport, courtroom use, and use on “combative individuals” during medical procedures like blood draws.”

Hurwitz goes on to write that “The technology is unregulated “despite the clear human rights risks associated with its use,” Amnesty International researchers wrote in a 2025 report detailing instances in which electric-shock devices have been used for torture. The report ends with a recommendation that countries “cease use of, decommission and destroy any stockpiles of such prohibited electric shock weapons.” Yumna Rizvi, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Victims of Torture, called the gloves “inherently abusive equipment that facilitates torture.”

The Electric Gloves of Human Torture are scheduled to be delivered to ICE by the end of March, 2027, unless Congress, somehow, stops the delivery, of the inhumane device.

But, Niklaus, the “Compliant” Technologies CEO—who believes Trump was annointed by God—is a former Blackhawk Helicopter pilot and a conspiracy theorist.

Mother Jones reports that: “ There is already a pending wrongful death lawsuit, against Compliant Technologies, that alleges that a 43-year-old man named Jonathan Mansfield died because corrections officers shocked him 27 times with the gloves and 13 times with a Taser. Two of the glove shocks lasted 45 and 99 seconds. The manufacturer’s recommended limit is 15 seconds.

Based upon ICE’s track record of killing and brutalizing detainees in it’s custody, or on the Streets of American Cities, what are the odds that at least one untrained, rogue ICE agent will use the Electric Chair Gloves on a Black or Brown victim for much more than 15 seconds?

Or, maybe, as Ralph Ellison foreshadowed this form of torture decades ago, ICE, and private for-profit companies like “Compliant Technologies,” will just build more monstrous metal holding cages and electrify the floors, electrocuting each adult or child considered not “compliant enough.”