The founder and CEO of the company contracted to supply ICE agents with shock gloves has said the Hand of God played a role in Donald Trump becoming president.
“I think President Trump is doing a great, fantastic job,” Jeff Niklaus of Compliant Technologies said last year on Stand in the Gap Today, a Christian podcast on the American Pastors Network.
Niklaus is a retired Army helicopter pilot, and the primary focus of the podcast was the Jan. 29, 2025 mid-aid collision between a military UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet (PSA Flight 5342) in the notoriously congested airspace around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. He suggested that God also played a direct role in this crash that killed 67.
“There’s so many near misses that I think the odds are we knew that the Lord allowed that to happen that day,” he said. “And it’s a sad situation and nobody wants to see that happen again.”
He proceeded into secular silliness, suggesting the Biden administration’s DEI policies bore part of the blame.
“But we have to understand there’s other agendas that came into play with the, if you want to call it the philosophy of a previous administration allowing people in cockpits and maybe other people weren’t allowed.”
He then went full MAGA.
“And then we also know the effects of the vaccines,” he added.
Niklaus and Compliant Technologies did not respond to a query from the Daily Beast about the genesis of the 351-volt Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, or GLOVE, that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has reportedly committed up to $20 million to purchase under a single-source, no-bid contract. The Kentucky-based company’s website, which declares Compliant “#1 in Hands-On De-Escalation,” does have several videos showing GLOVES in action. The subjects appear to be quickly immobilized.
“That sucked! That was terrible,” one subject exclaims.
An on-screen caption reads, “It does suck. But, it sucks a lot less than other options.”
Another video reports, “We usually see compliance in 2 to 3 seconds.”
Page four of a GLOVE user manual viewable online includes a snippet of scripture as a kind of Biblical endorsement of the product soon to be issued to the agents of ICE. Romans 13:4:
“If you do wrong be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for no reason, for he is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”
Niklaus, in an interview posted on YouTube in June, also said he believed God’s “fingerprint” was in his products.
The text of the manual says the company recommends against using the GLOVE on “vulnerable” people such as the elderly, small children, pregnant women, and the “severely handicapped.”
Does that suggest only slightly handicapped is fine?
When it comes to GLOVEs, DHS is a year behind Omaha, Nebraska, which purchased 40 pairs of GLOVEs for its police department last year. The total cost was $65,924, or $1,648 a pair.
But the acquisition of shock gloves for 29 school resource officers at Omaha’s high schools and middle schools initially received little public attention. That changed last week when the Associated Press reported that ICE was purchasing shock gloves, triggering an uproar among parents and students.
Omaha Mayor John Ewing and the city’s police department responded with a joint statement on Monday seeking to ease concerns by describing GLOVE as “the safest use-of-force option in the rare times when it is used.”
They stressed that strict protocols would be followed that include “verbal commands and a warning” before an officer even resorts to putting the GLOVE on. If their warnings don’t work, “an officer then puts one G.L.O.V.E. on their hand for skin-to-skin contact,” the statement said. “An electric shock ranging from 324 to 362 volts is administered in duration of one second up to 15 seconds. Once compliance is gained, the GLOVE is shut off or placed in standby mode.”
The statement reported the gloves have been used on two occasions during the 2025-2026 school year, once to detain a student who had been trespassing from another school, and once to restrain a student “who had made verbal threats and threw a chair at the school security guard, striking the guard in the head.”
The statement described the GLOVEs as safer than other alternatives: “A Taser emits higher voltage - up to 1,000 volts - via metal probes that latch onto the body. SROs also are equipped with batons, firearms and pepper spray – which have higher potential for harm.”
And the use of GLOVEs are subject to significant restrictions, the police department said, with officers “required to document the use and the circumstances surrounding it” and each case “subject to review through the department’s established use-of-force review process.”
The association with ICE still had parents voicing outrage, though, which was apparently enough to do away with the practice. Omaha School Board Superintendent Matthew Ray announced Tuesday that he had asked police to ”no longer be authorized to carry GLOVEs on any Omaha Public Schools premise.”
But ICE agents by the thousands are still slated to carry them, and there is a whole genre of online videos of them using excessive force with no apparent fear of review. They are not likely to give a verbal warning before even donning a GLOVE. They too often approach with guns drawn when civilians do nothing more than video them. And it is hard to imagine them documenting the use of GLOVES.
Niklaus did not respond to phone and email request for comment.
In response to a query about the particulars of Compliant Technologies’ contract for GLOVEs, a DHS spokesperson offered a non-responsive response, saying: “ICE is constantly assessing the needs of our officers in the field to ensure they have the tools and equipment necessary to safely arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens from our country. Every decision is made with careful consideration and appropriately reviewed to ensure that any technology ICE utilizes is consistent with all applicable law enforcement policies and standards.”
But when asked if DHS was aware that the company’s founder has said that President Trump was “anointed” by God, the spokesperson had no response at all.
