Four local branches of Citizens Bank are due for protests Saturday over the bank’s involvement with for-profit prison companies that run detention facilities for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The actions against the Providence bank are part of 64 planned standouts at Citizens branches on one day across the Eastern United States, said Peyton Fleming, a media contact for groups making up a De-ICE Citizens Bank Coalition. A regionwide protest was held Jan. 24 with around three dozen standouts. The movement “is about to get bigger,” Fleming said in a Monday email.
“Citizens Bank continues to bankroll companies that are cashing in on the explosion of immigrant arrests and incarcerations across the country. While other banks have ended their relationships with prison companies, Citizens is doing the opposite,” Fleming said.
Citizens media representatives were emailed Monday morning seeking comment about the protests and bank policies, but there was no immediate reply.
The coalition says Citizens Bank has given 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.
“While JPMorgan, Barclays and a half-dozen other major banks ended their relationships with the private prison industry in 2019, Citizens has strengthened its ties to the industry,” according to the coalition.
Two dozen standouts will be held in Massachusetts, including at Citizens branches in Cambridge’s Central Square from 10:30 a.m. to noon and three from 11 a.m. to noon at branches in Cambridge’s Harvard and Porter squares and in Somerville’s Davis Square. Other protests take place in Arlington, Watertown and other cities and towns in Greater Boston, as well as in Northampton, Holyoke and Springfield, a coalition map shows.
The activist choral group Bvocal sings at the Central Square protest from 11 to 11:20 a.m. and at the Harvard Square location from 11:30 to 11:50 a.m., Fleming said.
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