David Venturella, a former senior U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official whose career has spanned federal service and the private detention industry, has been named acting director of ICE, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed.
The appointment, first reported by the Washington Examiner, comes as the Trump administration intensifies pressure on the agency to expand arrests and deportations of unauthorized immigrants.
Venturella replaces Todd Lyons, who served as acting director through the opening months of President Donald Trump’s second term and is now departing the agency.
Venturella is a familiar figure inside ICE. He held senior posts at the agency under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, including oversight of the Obama-era Secure Communities program, which cross-referenced fingerprints collected by local police against federal immigration databases, according to Associated Press.
He later spent more than a decade at GEO Group, one of the largest private contractors operating federal immigration detention facilities, before quietly returning to ICE earlier this year as a senior adviser, the Wall Street Journal reported.
His elevation lands as senior White House adviser Stephen Miller continues to press ICE leadership for sharply higher enforcement numbers. According to the Associated Press, Miller has urged the agency to carry out as many as 3,000 immigration arrests per day — a target well above historical levels and one that has strained ICE’s detention and processing capacity.
Immigration advocates and Democratic lawmakers are expected to push back on the selection. Critics have long objected to Venturella’s GEO Group tenure on conflict-of-interest grounds and have raised concerns about his earlier oversight of Secure Communities, a program civil rights groups have accused of entangling local police in federal immigration enforcement.
The Washington Post reported that Venturella was granted an ethics waiver to rejoin ICE due to his prior work in the private prison sector.
Within the administration, however, Venturella has reportedly taken a different posture from some of the louder voices behind the deportation push. The Associated Press said he has argued internally for less visible enforcement — fewer televised raids and a reduced media footprint — citing concerns among some officials that high-profile operations have created political and legal complications.
His arrival also points to a longer-running structural issue at ICE: the agency has operated for years without a Senate-confirmed director, with nominees from administrations of both parties unable to clear one of the most politically contentious confirmation processes in Washington.
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