It was a grim harbinger of things to come when higher-ups at the controversial private prison firm Geo Group boasted to investors last year about “unprecedented opportunities” that would arise from President Donald Trump’s racist anti-immigrant crackdown.
And that excitement makes even more sense now that two of the top officials tasked with leading the president’s broadly unpopular mass incarceration and deportation agenda are people who have worked for Geo Group in the not-so-distant past.
The Trump administration said Tuesday that David Venturella, a former official at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement who worked as a senior executive at Geo Group before rejoining ICE last year, will serve as ICE’s new acting director. He will take over for the previous acting director, Todd Lyons, who reportedly struggled to meet demands from Trump officials — including Stephen Miller — that he ramp up deportations.
Venturella will work in tandem with Trump’s so-called border czar, Tom Homan, who reportedly made at least $5,000 as a consultant for Geo Group in recent years before joining Trump’s administration. Homan has also faced bribery accusations that he accepted $50,000 in an FBI sting operation after indicating he could help secure government contracts in Trump’s second term. (Homan has not been charged and has denied any wrongdoing.)
Homan has vowed to ramp up deportations, which could help line the pockets of Geo Group and other prison companies even more than the government already has over the past year.








