JERSEY CITY TO DIVEST FROM CITIZENS BANK OVER ICE DETENTION FINANCING
Mayor Solomon, Councilmembers Ephros and Brooks Announce Divestment Action
JERSEY CITY, N.J. -- Mayor James Solomon, together with Ward D Councilmember Jake Ephros and Ward B Councilmember Joel Brooks, today announced that the City of Jersey City will divest its funds from Citizens Bank in response to the bank's ongoing and deepening financial support for the country's two largest private prison companies, CoreCivic and The GEO Group.
While most major banks have cut ties with these corporations, Citizens Bank has moved in the opposite direction, helping CoreCivic and The GEO Group access more than $2.5 billion in financing, including funds approved earlier this year. Together, these two companies operate more than half of the approximately 70,000 ICE detention beds currently in use across the country, and are targeting a capacity of over 100,000 detainees by next year.
The GEO Group operates Delaney Hall, an ICE detention facility in Newark that has drawn widespread condemnation. Detainees at Delaney Hall recently engaged in a hunger strike to protest the deplorable conditions and ongoing human rights abuses at the facility. CoreCivic and The GEO Group have also faced mounting allegations of forced labor and wrongful deaths due to understaffing and medical neglect.
"Citizens Bank made a choice to finance the caging of human beings for profit. Jersey City is making a choice too: we will not be complicit, and we’ve already begun the process of pulling city funds,”
said Mayor James Solomon. “As long as institutions continue to bankroll the private prison industry and the suffering it depends on, we will use every tool at our disposal to ensure Jersey City taxpayers are not financing the abuse of our neighbors. I appreciate the advocacy of Councilmembers Ephros and Brooks on this critical issue.”
"ICE is a rogue agency inflicting terror on immigrant communities, and the private prison industry exists for one reason: to profit from that terror. Citizens Bank is a willing partner in that project. Jersey City's money will not fund human rights abuses, and we will not rest until ICE is abolished,"
said Councilmember Jake Ephros.
"What is happening at Delaney Hall and facilities like it across this country is not immigration enforcement, it is state-sponsored cruelty, bankrolled by institutions like Citizens Bank. We are done pretending that is acceptable. Abolish ICE, divest from detention, and hold every institution that profits from this system accountable,"
said Councilmember Joel Brooks.
Today, Jersey City makes its stand. This divestment is a reaffirmation of this city's commitment to being a place where immigrant neighbors are welcomed, where families are not torn apart by fear, and where every person, regardless of where they were born, can build a home and a life with dignity.
Nathaniel Styer
Communications Director | City of Jersey City
[email protected]