06/02/2026
Yes this is true and a definite conflict of interest. This guy is a senior executive at the largest private prisons- is becoming the head of ICE - and where are all these people being warehoused??? With private prisons for the most part. This is CORRUPTION again
The man who spent a decade as a senior executive at America's largest private prison company officially took over as acting director of ICE. The company he left, GEO Group, operates 23 ICE detention facilities. He now runs the agency that pays them.
His name is David Venturella. As reported by NPR and confirmed by CBS News and the New York Times, Venturella takes office after spending eleven years at GEO Group before returning to government on a federal ethics waiver: a document that allowed him to oversee ICE detention contracts despite his direct financial ties to the company holding those contracts.
GEO Group posted record revenue last year. Its executives told investors they expect continued growth.
Eighteen people have died in ICE custody in the first four months of 2026. The Detention Watch Network said flatly it expects "another spike of ICE detention facility openings."
Tom Homan, the border czar who coordinates everything Venturella now executes, was a paid GEO Group consultant before returning to government.
Acting attorney general Todd Blanche is Trump's personal defense lawyer. The new interim ICE director was approved via ethics waiver by the same DHS that fired its own inspector general in January 2025, one of 19 watchdogs Trump eliminated in his first four days in office.
Those 19 inspectors general identified $175 billion in potential savings in their last full year of operation: more than DOGE has claimed in total, across a figure independent analysts say is largely fabricated.
The watchdogs who would have reviewed Venturella's ethics waiver, audited GEO Group's contracts, and tracked deaths in detention are gone.
The people who replaced them answer directly to the president.
Venturella is not a new face in this system. He ran the "Secure Communities" program under Bush and Obama, the initiative that forced local police to collaborate with immigration enforcement and fractured immigrant communities' trust in local authorities for a generation.
He left ICE in 2012 to make money at GEO Group.
He came back in 2025 on a waiver, and within months of rejoining the government he requested ICE deport the Brazilian ex-girlfriend of a Trump donor as a personal favor.
This man is now in a director position.
This is not a revolving door. A revolving door implies the two sides are separate.
