Pressure against Citizens Bank for its political investments has grown to include Cambridge city councillor Marc McGovern, who posted a video Wednesday explaining why he is leaving the Providence financial institution after 23 years – and urging other customers to join a boycott that takes their money out of Citizens and puts it into a local bank.
“In 2003 I opened my first campaign fundraising account here at Citizens Bank in Central Square,” McGovern said in a short video filmed on the sidewalk outside a bank branch. “As of today, no more. I’m leaving Citizens Bank because of their financial support for ICE detention centers.”
His money is going to East Cambridge Savings Bank, “a local bank in East Cambridge which stands by our values,” McGovern said.
McGovern said his stand was part of a movement of “hundreds of Cambridge residents and thousands across the state in saying we are not going to do business with companies that support ICE and fight against our neighbors.”
Local branches of Citizens Bank were also protested Jan. 24 and March 7 over the bank’s involvement with for-profit prison companies running detention facilities for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The four local standouts in March were part of 64 planned at Citizens branches on one day across the Eastern United States.
A De-ICE Citizens Bank Coalition says Citizens Bank has arranged loans, bonding and credit to prison companies CoreCivic and The GEO Group for a dozen years for a total $2.5 billion, some of it approved this year as the federal detention centers went from fewer than 7,500 beds in 1995 to more than 100,000 under president Donald Trump.
ICE and the Department of Homeland Security plan to double the country’s detention capacity from a year ago, the coalition said, pointing to $45 billion in funding added in last year’s federal budget bill.
Citizens media representatives were emailed Wednesday seeking comment about the protests and bank policies, but there was no immediate reply.
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