Former Private Prison Executive Named Acting ICE Director

David Venturella, a former executive at a private prison operator, will serve as the acting head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after the agency's current leader steps down at the end of the month, the Trump administration said. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security confirmed late Tuesday that Venturella would succeed the current acting director.

The appointment was first reported by The New York Times. ICE did not immediately respond to a request for additional information. Venturella left the Geo Group in early 2023. He has been working at ICE leading the division that oversees detention contracts, members of Congress wrote in a public letter earlier this year.

At the Geo Group, which houses around one-third of ICE detainees, Venturella served in a number of posts including executive vice president overseeing corporate development. He previously oversaw removal operations for ICE in 2011 and 2012 after working for federal contractors.

The Geo Group has benefited from the current administration's mass deportation push. The company has garnered big contracts to open three shuttered facilities, including a $1 billion, 15-year deal for a detention center in New Jersey's largest city.

"Last year was the most successful period for new business wins in our company’s history," the company's CEO said during an earnings call last week. The Geo Group owns and operates 23 ICE detention facilities with about 26,000 available beds. It has also secured increases in air transportation subcontracts and a new contract for electronic monitoring.

Venturella will lead ICE at a time when the agency has a larger workforce and more financial resources than at the start of President Trump's second term. The agency received $75 billion from Congress to support the mass deportation campaign, about half of which is dedicated to expanding detention space.

Under the current acting director's tenure, ICE ramped up arrests and expanded hiring by 12,000 new employees. The agency is currently arresting about 1,200 people a day and has deported more than 570,000 people, though that falls short of the administration's goal of a million deportations a year.

The public mood has soured on the immigration crackdown that sent surges of federal immigration officers into American cities. Those operations prompted clashes between protesters and law enforcement, leading to the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis earlier this year.

To the executive director of the Detention Watch Network, the hire represents a classic example of the revolving door phenomenon. The group expressed concern that Venturella’s intimate knowledge of ICE will likely yield another spike of ICE detention facility openings.

Last year, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee wrote to the White House border czar raising concerns that Venturella's return to oversee contracts that would go to companies like his previous employer presented a conflict of interest. The department also plans to continue building up detention and deportation capacity while shifting away from headline-grabbing enforcement surges in cities.

ICE and Border Patrol were excluded from regular appropriations even after Congress ended the longest agency shutdown in U.S. history. Republicans are separately pursuing a partisan reconciliation process to fund all of the Department of Homeland Security, including ICE, for the remainder of the administration without Democratic support.

" — Geo Group CEO, last week (The Washington Times) The selection comes as deaths in detention have hit their highest total since the Department of Homeland Security was founded, following a sharp increase in the number of detainees.