The Trump administration has named a former longtime private prison executive, David Venturella, as ICE’s next leader, signaling the key role immigration jails will continue to play in the president’s promise to rid the country of millions of noncitizens.

Venturella spent 12 years at GEO Group, the massive private prison contractor, before returning to the federal government last year. Before GEO Group, he was a career official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

He has been tapped to serve as ICE’s acting director — meaning he will not have to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. ICE has not had a director confirmed by the Senate since 2017. Venturella is expected to take over the role when Todd Lyons, the current acting director, leaves the position on May 31.

Hiring Venturella reflects the importance of mass detention in President Donald Trump’s “mass deportation” agenda. The administration has claimed the legal right to throw millions of noncitizens behind bars, even those who have been here for years without issue and have been following legal processes, because the misery of detention is an effective way to force people to give up their legal rights and “self-deport.”

Venturella’s rise to the top of ICE also reflects the revolving door between private industry and federal law enforcement. The federal government largely relies on private contractors for detention centers, planes, and other infrastructure used to detain and deport people ― though Trump officials have been working in his second term to directly purchase facilities and planes.

Since rejoining the government to work for the second Trump administration, Venturella has been a key player overseeing the expansion of ICE detention.

The number of people in ICE detention has reached record highs in Trump’s second term, topping 70,000 earlier this year. The number of people in detention is now around 60,000 ― and about one-third of them are jailed in GEO Group facilities, according to a company earnings call last week.

“In 2025, we were awarded new or expanded contracts that represent up to approximately $520 million in new incremental annual revenues, which represents the largest amount of new business we have won in the single year in our company’s history,” GEO Group chairman George Zoley said on the call.

At the same time, ICE is on track for a record number of deaths of people in immigration custody. Despite that trend, ICE recently closed an office tasked by law with investigating abuses in immigration detention, as HuffPost reported.

GEO Group is ICE’s largest detention contractor, and ICE is GEO Group’s largest client. During the 2024 presidential campaign, the company’s employee-funded super PAC donated over $1 million to a pro-Trump super PAC, Open Secrets noted, with top executives donating even more.

Critics of immigration detention said Venturella’s appointment would likely mean even more expansion of ICE’s huge detention footprint.

“If there was ever a classic example of the revolving door phenomena it’s David Venturella,” said Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch Network, which campaigns against immigration detention and has called to abolish ICE, in a statement to HuffPost.

Shah noted GEO Group’s record profits last year and said that, before working for the corporation, Venturella worked for decades as an ICE official.

“Venturella built his career on mass incarceration, including separating loved ones through detention and deportation, having previously worked at ICE during both the Bush and Obama administrations. Not only is he fully bought into the culture of secrecy and violence at ICE, he has helped craft it.”

“Let’s be clear: His appointment is to ensure Trump’s corporate bosses continue profiting from our communities’ pain,” Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) said of reports that Venturella would lead ICE.

Prior to leaving the federal government for GEO Group, Venturella led what was then known as “Secure Communities,” an information-sharing program between local law enforcement and ICE that streamlined immigration arrests for people in local custody. After ramping up the program, then-President Barack Obama ended it in 2014, though Donald Trump brought it back in his first term.

Venturella spent 12 years at GEO Group, including as a senior vice president of business development, and later, client relations, according to corporate filings. Starting in 2023, he worked as a consultant for the company, according to a contract filed with the SEC that was set to expire in January 2025. Venturella was paid over $6 million by the company, The Washington Post reported.

The Post report, published in August, described Venturella returning to the Trump administration as “now the No. 2 official overseeing the ICE division that manages contracts for immigrant detention centers.” It cited an organizational chart and an unnamed source briefed on his role.

To avoid ethics rules against government employees working on their former employer’s contracts, Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan ― himself a former GEO Group consultant ― initially hired Venturella as a full-time adviser and gave him an ethics waiver, the Post reported. (At the time, an ICE spokesperson told the paper that Venturella had divested his GEO Group stocks and had “no role” in reviewing contracts, but didn’t explain why he would need a waiver to work on GEO Group matters.)

Last year, House Democrats wrote to Homan, citing the Post report and saying his role hiring Venturella, and his own former work for GEO Group, “raise serious concerns about potential conflicts of interest in this arrangement.”

Among the lowlights of Venturella’s time back in government, he helped a Trump ally get his ex-girlfriend deported during a custody battle, The New York Times reported in March. Paolo Zampolli, a Trump envoy who is credited with introducing the president to Melania Trump years ago, asked for the favor after learning that his ex, Amanda Ungaro, had been arrested on fraud charges. Zampolli called Venturella, who, according to the Times report, coordinated to have ICE agents pick up Ungaro before she was released on bail.

Zampolli denied asking for the favor from Venturella, but acknowledged asking him about Ungaro. The Department of Homeland Security denied that Ungaro’s deportation was the result of “political reasons or favors,” the Times reported.

After running a 2024 campaign promising “mass deportation,” Trump’s second term has been marked both by an explosion of the number of people behind bars ― and a public backlash to cruel ICE tactics and mass detention. Even in conservative areas of the country, for example, locals are pushing back against ICE plans to purchase large warehouses to jail thousands of noncitizens. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin paused warehouse purchases in March amid a review of the contracting process under his predecessor, Kristi Noem.

Recently, private prison operators acknowledged that the government was considering buying “turnkey” facilities ― presumably, those currently owned by private operators ― that are already set up for immigration detention.

Among the vendors that could benefit most: GEO Group.

“I can respectfully acknowledge that we have been in discussions with ICE regarding the potential sale of multiple facilities subject to mutual agreement on price and our continued management of those facilities under long term support services contracts,” Zoley said on last week’s call.

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