More than 50 organizations in New Jersey have signed a petition demanding that Citizens Bank, a multibillion-dollar financial institution headquartered in Rhode Island, “end all credit, financing, and financial services to CoreCivic and The GEO Group,” the two leading private corporations who run detention centers for ICE.
“We call on all financial institutions to cut ties with any companies that have been helping ICE tear New Jersey families apart, disrupt and terrorize our communities, and undermine our civil rights,” said Leila Amirhamzeh, director of community reinvestment for NJ Citizen Action, which organized the petition.
Citizens Bank, which has 107 branches throughout New Jersey, and more than a thousand nationwide, especially in New England and the Northeast, claims assets of $220 billion, making it the twenty-second largest bank in the United States. Nationwide, from New England to Delaware and west to Ohio and Michigan, activist groups with Indivisible and other groups have assembled outside bank branches to protest Citizen Bank’s involvement with GEO and Core Civic, according to De-ICE Citizens Bank. More than 140 individual protest actions at branches across the Northeast and Midwest took place on June 6, and protests have spread as far away as Kansas and California. The coalition is planning a coordinated national day of action on July 18.
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