Above photo: Michael Ziegler, president of AFT-RIFT Local 6516, speaking outside Citizens Bank shareholders’ meeting in Providence, Rhode Island, April 23, 2026. Christopher Shea.
Following months of intense public pressure, Citizens Bank announced on July 17 that it would end its financing of immigration detention centers operated by CoreCivic and GEO Group. While the bank claims its decision was due to the federal government’s plans to purchase many of those companies’ facilities, it is more likely that the withdrawal of millions of dollars by protesting groups over the past few months was the key factor.
After demonstrating at the bank’s annual shareholders’ meeting in April in Providence, Rhode Island, American Federation of Teachers-Rhode Island Federation of Teachers (AFT-RIFT) Local 6516, which represents 2,000 working graduate and undergraduate students at Brown University, pulled out $500,000 in deposits from the bank.
At an April press conference announcing their decision, Michael Ziegler, president of Local 6516, said: “For us, ICE is a workplace safety issue. We are not going to have it be the case that our members’ dues are going to be used to help finance the camps that are going to detain them.” Hundreds of the union’s members are immigrant workers.
The Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, a coalition of 60 religious groups, also withdrew $3 million in protest in April. In June, local governments and school districts in Montclair and Jersey City, New Jersey, pulled out a combined $300 million following protests supporting a work stoppage by immigrants imprisoned at Delaney Hall, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center run by GEO Group in Jersey City.
Headquartered in Providence, Citizens Bank, with $233.8 billion in assets as of June 30, 2026, is one of the oldest and largest financial institutions in the U.S. CoreCivic, with over $2 billion in ICE contracts, became a Citizen’s client in 2011, borrowing $500 million from the bank in 2024.
The GEO Group, which became a Citizens client in 2018, has a $550 million line of credit with the bank. The company currently has contracts to run facilities that hold over 26,000 ICE detainees. In the first quarter of 2026, GEO’s profits were $705.2 million, a 17% increase over last year. (workers.org/2026/06/92997)
While Citizens claims that “it is against bank regulations to deny banking services to individuals and to lawful businesses based on political or religious considerations” — a practice known as debanking — regulations never kept them from denying loans to people in Black and Brown communities — a practice known as redlining. The National Community Reinvestment Coalition and Reveal have both found that Black and Brown loan applicants are much more likely to be denied than white applicants by Citizens.
The De-ICE Citizens Bank coalition, in a statement issued July 17, called the bank’s decision “an important victory for the people who refused to let a major bank finance human suffering brought on by ICE detention activities.” (The Rhode Island Current, July 17)
