The former Oklahoma senator picked by Donald Trump to head the Department of Homeland Security has lost his first major battle in the job.
Markwayne Mullin, who took over from the ousted Kristi Noem in March, had been pushing to get his hometown sheriff, Vic Regalado, appointed as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
He has been outmuscled, however, by Trump henchmen Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, who wanted their own man in charge at the agency as it leads an anti-migrant crackdown.
The Trump administration confirmed on Tuesday that private prison veteran David Venturella, a former senior executive at GEO Group, will take over from outgoing director Todd Lyons on June 1.
The appointment is a stinging defeat for Mullin, who wanted Tulsa Sheriff Regalado to land the role.
But it is a major triumph for border czar Homan, who personally recruited Venturella back into government in February 2025 and had been lobbying hard for the promotion. It is also a vindication for Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff Miller who has continued to direct immigration policy from behind the scenes despite his apparent sidelining at DHS, as the Beast’s sister Substack outlet PunchUp reported on Tuesday.
Venturella, who is around 60, spent more than 12 years as an executive at GEO Group, the for-profit prison giant headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida. He left the company in 2023 but remained a paid GEO consultant through Jan. 31, 2025, the Washington Post reported, before joining ICE as a senior adviser less than two weeks later. The Trump administration granted him an ethics waiver allowing him to work on matters involving his former employer.
Under his watch as senior adviser, ICE has awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in fresh contracts to GEO Group, the Post reported, as it has reopened mothballed prisons and pitched temporary tent camps to absorb a surge in detention numbers.
GEO Group, which records show holds more than $1 billion in current ICE business, is among the agency’s largest contractors and owns the only firm with a federal deal to track immigrants via GPS ankle monitors.
Mullin had been pushing for Regalado—a MAGA lawman who has shared a stage with QAnon conspiracy theorists and admitted paying his superior officer to be fast-tracked for promotion in the Tulsa Police Department, as PunchUp revealed.
Venturella inherits an agency reeling from a string of crises, including January’s fatal shootings of Americans Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both 37, by federal agents in Minneapolis.
ICE agent Jonathan Ross, 43, killed Good on Jan. 7 and has since been quietly relocated to a fresh state posting while an FBI probe stalls, PunchUp reported last month, sparking anger on Capitol Hill. ICE arrests have plunged to roughly 1,200 a day, Mullin has acknowledged—well short of Miller’s stated goal of 3,000 detentions a day.
The pick has drawn criticism from Democrats. Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois, 42, wrote on X on Tuesday night: “Let’s be clear: his appointment is to ensure Trump’s corporate bosses continue profiting from our communities’ pain.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
