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The Trump administration announced Tuesday that former private prison executive David Venturella will lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in an acting capacity after the agency’s current director departs at the end of the month.

Venturella has been a senior adviser to ICE since February 2025 and previously worked at the private prison giant GEO Group for more than a decade, most recently serving as the company’s senior vice president of client relations until 2023. GEO Group is a major beneficiary of federal contracts, running immigration detention centers for ICE.

The Washington Post noted that GEO Group also “owns the only company with an ICE contract to track immigrants through GPS ankle monitors.”

“A federal ethics rule generally bars government employees from working on contracts awarded to their former employers for one year, but the administration granted him a waiver from this........

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