The man who headed the 2016 ill-fated effort to bring an $80 million, 800-bed immigration detention center to Gary is the new acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
The Trump administration announced the appointment of David Venturella on Tuesday. He replaces Todd Lyons who is stepping down at the end of the month.
Venturella worked as executive vice president of the Geo Group Inc. until 2023. Since then, he’s been working at ICE, heading the division that oversees detention contracts. He also oversaw removal operations for ICE in 2011 and 2012 after working for federal contractors, including one that specializes in security clearances and background checks, according to the Associated Press
GEO Group has more than $1 billion worth of contracts with ICE, according to public records.
Late last year, a GEO press release stated the company received a $121 million contract from ICE for skip tracing services, an enhanced location program to verify addresses for the government as it escalates ICE enforcement activities.
The skip tracing program was discontinued during the Obama administration but started up again by Trump when he took office in 2017.
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After he retired from GEO, NBC News reported Venturella was a consultant for the company, advising on new and existing contracts, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Venturella spent time in Gary in 2016 wooing the city with cash infusions for its public safety agencies, workforce development and construction assistance for enhancing Airport Road.
GEO wanted to build its private prison on 24 acres just north of the Gary/Chicago International Airport. Venturella told city officials at a meeting the prison would create about 200 jobs as well as “hundreds” of construction jobs over an 18- to 24-month period.
The promises of jobs and tax money didn’t soothe the vocal crowd that had to be silenced several times by Gary Board of Zoning Appeals president Rinzer Williams. More than a dozen people spoke against the project.
The Rev. Charles Streitelmeier, who headed the Northwest Indiana Federation of Interfaith Organizations, led the opposition.
On Wednesday, he voiced skepticism about Venturella’s appointment.
“It’s just another example of the typical revolving door between big corporations and the government corpocracy,” Streitelmeier said.
“Here we have someone who is in that business stepping into a government position basically treating human beings and their lives as raw material for profits,” he said.
Former mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson headed the city when GEO sought to build its prison.
She opposed the project and the Gary City Council rejected GEO’s bid for a rezone in May, 2016.
“The detentions and deportations are money plays. This appointment is consistent with that,” Freeman-Wilson said Wednesday.
In 2016, the GEO prison proposal drew several outspoken opponents, including former mayor Richard G. Hatcher, then-Diocese of Gary Bishop Donald Hying, and former Lake County sheriff Roy Dominguez.
Bishop Hying called GEO’s detention plans “morally repugnant.”
He said there’s no place in the community for a business that warehouses individuals who are already vulnerable.
“They’re in need of our help, not our rejection. The proposal doesn’t make sense to us. Does Gary need jobs, yes. Does Gary need renovation, yes. But this is not the way to go about it,” he said.
Hatcher, whose daughter Ragen Hatcher sat on the city council at the time, said the detention center would diminish the potential of the airport that first developed under his administration.
“I want to stand as solidly and firmly as I can with the mayor of this city, Karen Freeman-Wilson. She has taken a position against construction of this facility. Think very carefully,” he said.
Dominguez called the prison, to be built on a contaminated site next to a Superfund plot of land, a potential “field of screams.”
Former Gary Airport Authority chairman Stephen Mays said the prison would hinder development at the airport.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Carole Carlson is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.