Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is seeking details on the new acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, David Venturella, amid concern about his ties to the private prison industry.
I recently wrote about Venturella’s ties to Geo Group, a prison contractor that has raked in record revenue thanks to the Trump administration’s racist anti-immigrant agenda — last year, its executives boasted to investors about all the money they stood to make.
Venturella served as a senior executive at the company, and his hiring comes amid questions about President Donald Trump and members of his regime potentially profiting from the immigration crackdown.
Warren sent a letter to Venturella on Wednesday with a request for information that could help dispel such worries. The letter reads, in part:
You worked at the GEO Group, the largest private prison contractor operating immigrant detention facilities across the U.S., for over a decade prior to joining ICE; that history, and your reported use of DHS personnel and resources for personal or political favors, raise serious concerns about your ability to effectively serve as ICE’s leader, especially at a time when the Trump Administration’s mass deportation agenda is systematically violating fundamental human rights.
Warren’s letter cites numerous news reports about Venturella, including one from The Washington Post that referred to him as the “former private prison exec behind ICE’s immigrant detention surge.”
The senator wrote that she wants assurances that Venturella will recuse himself from “all matters that could directly or indirectly benefit GEO Group.” She also requested that he make ethics-related information public.
Warren’s letter also seeks information on Venturella’s reported involvement in helping facilitate ICE’s detention of Trump ally Paolo Zampolli’s ex-wife amid a custody battle over their son.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.
Warren gave Venturella a June 10 deadline to respond. This is just one of many threads you can confidently assume Democrats will try to pull if they gain control of the House and its investigatory powers in November.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.