The former private prison exec behind ICE's immigrant detention surge

Washington Post

01-08-2025

Shortly after the election, newly named 'border czar' Tom Homan approached an old friend and former colleague about helping him lead President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. But there was a problem: The friend, David Venturella, was just finishing a 12-year stint at private prison firm Geo Group, where securities filings show he was paid more than $6 million to run immigrant detention centers for the federal government.
A federal ethics rule generally bars government employees from working on contracts awarded to their former employers for one year. Homan and Venturella discussed how the hiring could also invite public criticism of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's close ties to Geo, its largest contractor, according to a person Venturella later briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
So rather than appoint Venturella to a high-profile post at ICE, the Department of Homeland Security hired him as a full-time adviser and granted him a waiver from the ethics rule, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Post. The maneuver allowed him to avoid a potentially contentious Senate confirmation hearing and keep his name off public websites.
Venturella, 59, is now the No. 2 official overseeing the ICE division that manages contracts for immigrant detention centers, according to an organizational chart and a person briefed on his role, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal agency matters.
In an emailed statement, an ICE spokesperson said Venturella has divested his Geo stocks and holdings and 'has no financial ties to the company.' The spokesperson said he 'has no role in reviewing, approving, or recommending contracts,' but declined to comment on why he was given a waiver that authorizes him to work on Geo matters.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said Homan abides by 'the highest ethical standards and he had no knowledge of any potential conflicts' involving Venturella. She said Homan, who previously consulted for Geo, recuses himself from all discussions of government contracts.
Venturella and Geo both did not respond to multiple emails and phone calls seeking comment.
Venturella's hiring highlights the revolving-door relationship between ICE and Geo, a Boca Raton, Florida-based conglomerate that has emerged as one of the leading players in Trump's mass deportation agenda.
As Geo has grown to become ICE's contractor of choice, the company has cultivated close ties to the ICE officials who write and oversee its contracts and offered some of them jobs after leaving government.
Venturella was one of these officials: He was working as an assistant director at ICE when Geo recruited him in 2012 for a role overseeing business development, he said in a court deposition. He worked as a Geo executive until 2023 and as a paid consultant through Jan. 31 of this year, the company said in a filing.
The former executive's return to ICE, at a time when Trump is dramatically increasing the nation's reliance on immigrant detention, is a sign of how deeply interwoven the personnel and priorities of the two organizations have become, said Scott Shuchart, a former ICE assistant director who was appointed by Biden and left in January.
At least six former ICE officials who left government over the past decade now work in senior leadership roles at Geo Group, according to LinkedIn profiles, government biographies and reporting by the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight.
'When there's a meeting with Geo, it feels like all the old fraternity brothers coming back and everybody knows the secret handshake,' Shuchart said. 'It feels uncomfortably intimate.'
ICE did not respond to questions about its officials going to or coming from jobs at Geo. In response to questions about Venturella, an agency spokesperson said his background in government and the private sector 'provide ICE leadership with invaluable knowledge and expertise.'
Critics of the detention industry contend Geo is using its influence over ICE to achieve its own goals of growth and profits.
'The question I think for the American people is, do you want to have people who are in these positions solely to make money for the companies or do you want to actually have somebody that will hold the companies accountable?' Rep. Pramila Jayapal (Washington), the ranking Democrat on the House's subcommittee on immigration, said in an interview.
Private contractors including Geo hold 86 percent of ICE's immigrant detainees, according to nonprofit researcher Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. The Trump administration is relying on these companies to help achieve its goal of doubling the nation's detention capacity to 100,000 beds. Geo is vying for new and expanded contracts as the government prepares to spend $45 billion over the next four years on immigrant detention — more than the Obama, Biden and first Trump administrations spent on detention combined.
In a 2020 letter to ICE, congressional Democrats including Jayapal, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris warned of what they called a 'troubling' pattern of close ties between the agency and the detention industry. The flow of contracts and personnel from ICE to these contractors 'raises particular concerns about corruption, conflicts of interest, and your agencies' ethics rules and guidance,' they wrote in the 2020 letter, which was addressed in part to ICE acting director Matthew Albence.
Two years later, Albence joined Geo Group as senior vice president of client relations. Albence did not respond to requests for comment.
The federal 'impartiality rule' prevents government employees from working on contracts awarded to their former employer for one year. Adopted in the early 1990s, it was intended to prevent businesses from gaining an unfair advantage from personnel moves, said Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics lawyer for the George W. Bush administration.
Exceptions to this rule, known as '502 authorizations,' are granted only under 'exceptional circumstances' — usually, when the government urgently needs the expertise of a businessperson with specialized experience, Painter said.
Now in his third government stint, Venturella has deep relationships across the agency and an extensive knowledge of detention contracts which he has displayed in numerous court declarations and depositions. He earns a salary of $164,280, government records show — about one-eighth what he earned during a typical year as a top Geo executive.
Meanwhile, his former employer is experiencing one of its most rapid periods of growth.
Since January, ICE has awarded Geo new and modified contracts expected to increase the company's annual revenue at least 10 percent, including a deal to expand an existing facility in southeast Georgia into one of the country's largest immigrant detention centers. The agency's recent move to sharply increase the number of immigrants wearing GPS ankle monitors could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in added annual revenue for BI Inc., a Geo subsidiary, The Post reported last week.
'Large amounts of taxpayer money is going to his former employer,' Painter said of Venturella's hiring. 'It's not fair to the taxpayer to have a former executive at that company' involved in these contracts, he added.
Last month, the agency awarded BI a one-year extension to its immigrant ankle-monitoring contract. That decision delayed a competitive bidding process that could have dislodged Geo's control of the lucrative business, leaving some to wonder if the company got preferential treatment.
Justin Hawkins, CEO of Talitrix, a maker of wrist-worn tracking devices, says his company held dozens of meetings with ICE in preparation for bidding on the contract. 'We believe more competition in this space will lead to better outcomes, greater compliance, stronger public safety, and reduced costs to taxpayers,' he said in an emailed statement.
A few days before the ankle monitoring contract was extended, Venturella met with executives from Geo to discuss the immigrant tracking program, according to an internal ICE document reviewed by The Post.
The meeting's organizer: Henry Lucero, a former ICE official who is now a vice president at Geo. Lucero did not respond to requests for comment.