WASHINGTON—The Trump administration will designate David Venturella, a former private prison company executive and former career employee of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as its next acting director, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said on Tuesday.
Venturella will take over an agency after months of turmoil that culminated in its largest-ever operation in Minneapolis last winter, in which immigration agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens. The agency has adopted a lower profile in recent months, though it is facing pressure from many in President Trump’s base to step up deportations in accordance with the president’s campaign promise.
Venturella will succeed Todd Lyons, the acting director for the past year, for whom he had been serving as a top adviser. Lyons resigned from his post for a job in the private sector.
Venturella is likely to be a controversial choice to lead ICE. He was previously executive director of ICE’s Secure Communities program during the Obama administration. Before returning to DHS last year, Venturella worked at the private prison company Geo Group. During the second Trump administration, Venturella also advocated for the use of warehouses for immigration detention, a plan that has been under review since Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin took over the agency.
The position was one of the most closely watched after Lyons’s departure was announced. During his Senate confirmation hearing, Mullin said that his goal was for DHS to no longer be “the lead story every single day” in six months, a nod to his predecessor’s controversial and highly visible approach to immigration enforcement. But Venturella will also be taking over an agency that faced pressure from White House officials to increase arrest numbers. Last year, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said he wanted ICE to make 3,000 arrests a day.
ICE has gone without a confirmed director for more than eight years, as successive administrations have struggled to find candidates willing to take the job and who could clear Senate confirmation.
Mullin, who was recently confirmed to his post following the ouster of Kristi Noem, had advocated giving the job to Tulsa County Sheriff Vic Regalado. Mullin had served as a Senator from Oklahoma before taking over DHS, and Regalado had publicly floated running to replace him in the Senate.
Even if the administration nominated Regalado for the permanent post, his confirmation vote likely wouldn’t come up for months.
Venturella has been known inside the agency as a voice of relative restraint during his time back at the agency and had argued against some of ICE’s flashier operations in favor of more bread-and-butter enforcement. It is likely the low-key approach that won him the job, as Mullin seeks to lower DHS’s public profile, according to people familiar with the matter.
Write to Michelle Hackman at michelle.hackman@wsj.com
