Citizens Bank ends ties to companies running ICE detentions after faith leaders, activists strategically withdraw funds 

Citizens Bank has announced it will stop financing two private prison companies following months of pressure led by faith-based groups and activists. 

The decision comes in the midst of a coordinated campaign of public pressure combined with regular acts of withdrawing funds from the bank, led by the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO), Greater Cleveland Congregations, and the De-ICE Citizens Bank Coalition. The campaign targeted Citizen bank’s financing of CoreCivic and GEO Group, who have opened and profited from several new detention centers for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

‘Organized people and money’ 

This move for Citizens Bank to cut ties with the companies “shows that organized people and organized money can make a difference and move powerful institutions to do the right thing,” the GBIO said in a statement addressing the change. 

The Rev. John Edgerton, senior minister of Old South Church, a United Church of Christ congregation in Boston, was interviewed on The Rachel Maddow Show (beginning around 3:50), about the development. 

“This is such an important victory,” Edgerton said in the interview. “It is a sign that any business, any part of this government that is participating in these terrible actions that are demonizing and harming our neighbors, are going to be in a lousy position… There were municipal governments that were pulling their deposits. There were individual depositors doing it. Whole organizations. Hundreds of millions of dollars. The pressure got to be so great that they had no choice but to cut this.” 

Centering immigrant neighbors, friends, allies 

Leaders in the Not With Our Money campaign began requesting to meet with Citizens Bank in April 2024, and after receiving no response, withdrew the first $1 million dollars on May 4. As more groups joined – including two New Jersey cities that pulled over $350 million from Citizens Bank – national pressure grew. 

A statement from Citizens Bank stated that their decision to stop financing CoreCivic and GEO Group is “a business decision based on changed commercial circumstances and does not reflect any change in our view regarding these companies’ business models or operations.” 

In the statement, Citizens expressed disappointment with “activist groups” who have called on them to stop financing the private prisons groups. 

“Regardless of the rationale, this is the outcome that was needed,” said the Rev. Ray Hammond, pastor of Bethel AME Church in Boston and a former Citizens Board member. “Our immigrant friends, neighbors, and allies deserve to know that community institutions they may have counted on are not directly enabling a system that has brought irreparable harm to neighborhoods across the country.” 

‘We the people’ 

The leaders in these efforts continue to pressure Citizens Bank to be clear about the timeline for ending these financial relationships – urging the change to take place immediately.  

“This is what organizing looks like,” Keisha Krumm, executive director of Greater Cleveland Congregations, said in a statement, “Aimed, focused strategy grounded in the principles of ‘We the People,’ moving corporate interests to change course.”   

View our previous UCC News story and interview with Edgerton when the campaign launched. 

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