Shocking tools in the hands of murderers. 

There never goes a full week in American politics and the news cycle without us hearing more than a handful of damning stories about President Trump’s federal kidnapping forces and their so-called immigration enforcement operations. 

Amidst the usual stream of one terrible news after another even this week, we came to know that President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is now planning on equipping its agents with electrocuting gloves that analysts believe could be used against undocumented immigrants who are being rounded up, along with peaceful protestors in order to either scare them away or kill them, if need be. 

The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press and others have all reported on this by now. 

According to an Associated Press report, Compliant Technologies, the company that makes these gloves and the technology that they use, has said that these battery powered gloves could be used to induce variable voltage shocks when applied on an individual, but advised against its use in high population density areas and on at-risk sections of the population such as children, the elderly and the pregnant women. 

However, in their public remarks, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has mentioned that they do not believe that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will use these gloves in a judicious manner and they are expecting widespread constitutional and human rights abuses to occur due to these new technologies at ICE’s disposal. 

These gloves are capable of inducing various strengths of electric shocks to an individual upon skin contact and have only been used by local law enforcement officers and corrections facilities under tightly regulated environments and clearly worded guidelines. We can be sure that none of those regulations will be able to rein in on ICE. 

While there is plenty of debate going around these new tactics that ICE is about to start experimenting with, one should remember that Congressional Democrats did eventually vote in favour of funding ICE and other agencies under the DHS till the end of Trump's second term. 

They have ground to catch up on this and they could do that by either forcing a Congressional stop on these new tactics or have the DHS be restrained by the courts via lawsuits stemming out from the states that they control.

Regardless of how this new thing plays out in Congress and the courts, one thing is clear. These rampant human rights and constitutional violations that are being undertaken by this administration at all levels and departments, starting with immigration enforcement, need to now be legally prosecuted.

Congressional Democrats can help with this by organising grass roots movements and protests that could act simultaneously to garner electoral support for the November midterms and act as a painful pressure point for the Republican Party and the Trump administration that would soon force them to back down on employing the heinous tactic of electrocuting people during ongoing immigration raids. 

America's credentials as being a bastion of freedom and liberty are already running on thin ice under this administration. It is about time that the Congress, states and the civil society huddle together and work with each other to take this country back from the divisive forces of tyranny that are threatening to tear us apart from within.