As a community organization, the Central New York Solidarity Coalition is very concerned about the impact of anti-immigrant policies in our neighborhoods and the creation of for-profit incarceration facilities to support these harmful policies. In particular we are troubled that Citizens Bank has provided financing to two notorious giants of the private prison industry, Core Civic and GEO Group. These firms have been contracted to build and operate a network of private prisons to house victims of the surge of ICE arrests. Data from DHS and the Cato Institute have shown that the majority of ICE detainees have no criminal record, yet they are locked up in facilities which deny their basic needs for decent food, sanitation, and medical care while depriving them of rights guaranteed by the Constitution. By providing financing to these firms, Citizens Bank is making itself complicit in these abuses. This directly contradicts your corporate pledge to foster strong communities by investing in people, businesses, and neighborhoods for a thriving resilient future.
Therefore the CNY Solidarity Coalition supports depositors and community members who decline to do business with Citizens Bank until it ceases to support these abusive private prison firms, and we call on Citizens Bank to publicly commit to severing future ties with these firms, allow current financial agreements with them to expire, and enter into no new ones.