Citizens Financial Group is facing pushback from shareholders, customers and activists who want the bank to cut ties with federal immigration detention center operators.
The Greater Boston Interfaith Organization pledged to withdraw $1 million from its Citizens accounts Monday after CEO Bruce Van Saun allegedly went back on a promise to meet with them to discuss the bank’s relationship with CoreCivic and The GEO Group, which each own and operate U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers.
Organizers for the De-ICE Citizens Bank Coalition said Citizens has given CoreCivic and GEO $2.5 billion in financing, and that more than 20 people have died in the care of ICE facilities owned by these groups.
“We come today because we’re deeply troubled with what they’re doing with our money,” Rev. John Edgerton, whose church is part of the GBIO, said during a press conference held Monday in Boston. “People come to my church and they give money from their wages. They’re generous to our church, and we deposit it here at the bank, and then the bank uses it toward private prisons.”
Numerous major banks cut financial ties with private prison companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group in 2019 amid public pressure. Citizens was not among them. In January, Citizens expanded GEO Group's borrowing capacity by $100 million, a securities filing shows.
A Citizens spokesperson told Banking Dive the bank has a policy of not commenting on specific client relationships.
“Citizens is a relationship-focused bank that stands by its clients through both good times and challenges, provided they meet our standards and operate in a lawful manner,” the spokesperson said. “Every relationship is subject to rigorous due diligence and ongoing monitoring, and we are prepared to exit relationships when those standards are not met, consistent with contractual and regulatory obligations.”
Van Saun allegedly made the promise to discuss Citizens’ CoreCivic and GEO Group ties at the bank’s annual shareholder meeting last month. Most shareholders in attendance were part of GBIO, and purchased shares for the purpose of gaining access to the shareholder meeting, shareholder Charlie Homer told Banking Dive.
GBIO’s pledge is part of a larger effort which it has branded Not With Our Money, Citizens! It follows a similar commitment from the Brown University Graduate Labor Organization, which said late last month it would withdraw $500,000 from Citizens based on its relationships with CoreCivic and GEO.
About half of the union’s roughly 2,000 members are international students, said Brown GLO President Michael Ziegler in an interview with Banking Dive.
“Our reasoning is that we don't want members’ dues to be supporting an institution that gives financing to camps that could detain our members,” he said, pointing to recent high-profile examples of university students detained by ICE, including Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk.
The GLO is shopping around for the right bank to move funds to, Ziegler said.
GBIO on Monday said that it holds $14 million in Citizens accounts and that its relationship with the bank began in 2005, when the organization and the bank partnered on a financial literacy program directed toward the underserved. But Citizens’ relationships with CoreCivic and GEO Group have left GBIO “feeling a sense of shock and betrayal,” the organization said in a press announcement.
GBIO’s initial withdrawal of $1 million will escalate if Citizens “refuse[s] to engage and ignore this serious issue,” the organization said.
Protesters have gathered at Citizens locations several times since January, including at least two days of coordinated protests across several states and other instances of grassroots protests. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the bank’s headquarters April 23, the day of its shareholder meeting, to “shed light on the harm the bank is enabling” by supporting CoreCivic and GEO Group, according to organizers.
Individual customers have also decided to take their money out of Citizens.
Carole Okun, a Citizens customer based in Albany, New York, opted to take her funds out of the bank in protest of its support for CoreCivic and GEO Group. She said she’d amassed roughly $90,000 in a Citizens savings account before learning about its connection to the private prison groups.
She said she asked a Citizens representative about its connection to CoreCivic and GEO Group, and that the representative confirmed the relationship but also highlighted the bank’s work within the community.
“I appreciate that they help the community, but I can't overlook the other extreme end of the spectrum,” Okun said. She then moved $80,000 to Ally Bank, which she said does not appear to support private prisons. She left $10,000 in Citizens, and is watching to see “if they do a course correction,” she said.
Okun previously attended protests at the Albany International Airport directed at Avelo, an airline company that was hosting deportation flights for ICE. When Avelo halted its ICE deportation flights in January, Okun said she and fellow demonstrators high-fived.
“It gave us a lot of energy that our work during the winter, when we'd stand outside in the cold, was worth it,” Okun said. She said she hopes the protests against Citizens yield similar results.
The Citizens spokesperson said it’s “unfair to view Citizens through a single‑issue lens,” and that the company has invested $2 billion in equity and loan commitments last year to finance more than 8,000 new units of affordable housing.
