Jersey City yanks $265 million from bank that finances private prison companies

Jersey City is pulling $265 million in public funds from Citizens Bank because the bank finances the nation’s two largest private prison companies.

City officials announced the divestment on Thursday. They said $150 million has already been withdrawn. The rest is coming out in days.

“We are not waiting around,” said Councilmember Jake Ephros.

The target is Citizens’ role in funding GEO Group and CoreCivic. Together, those two companies hold more than half of the 70,000 people locked up by ICE across the country.

GEO Group runs Delaney Hall in nearby Newark. Detainees there recently went on a hunger strike. They protested what advocates call abominable conditions. CoreCivic runs the Elizabeth Detention Center.

“That is not immigration enforcement,” Ephros said. “It is a for-profit machine built on human suffering, and Citizens Bank has been writing the checks.”

Most major Wall Street banks cut ties with private prison companies in 2019. Citizens went the other way. Since 2012, it has helped coordinate and provide more than $2 billion in loans and credit for CoreCivic and GEO Group. It expanded GEO’s borrowing capacity by $100 million even as other banks pulled back.

Mayor James Solomon said the city will not be complicit. “As long as institutions continue to bankroll the private prison industry and the suffering it depends on,” he said, “we will use every tool at our disposal to ensure Jersey City taxpayers are not financing the abuse of our neighbors.”

Councilmember Joel Brooks called the conditions at Delaney Hall state-sponsored cruelty. “We are done pretending that is acceptable,” he said.

Between 2017 and 2021, 52 people died in ICE detention. Physicians for Human Rights found that 95% of those deaths were possibly preventable with proper care.

Administration officials have called for an expansion of detention beds to at least 100,000. That would more than double the current capacity.

Ephros was direct. “ICE should be abolished,” he said. “The private prison industry should not exist. And Jersey City will not spend one more dollar propping up the institutions that make any of it possible.”

The city’s communications director, Nathaniel Styer, confirmed the withdrawal. Citizens Bank did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The bank has previously said it is dedicated to fostering strong communities, but it has not ended its lending to CoreCivic or GEO Group.

The divestment follows an escalating boycott campaign by the De-ICE Citizens Bank Coalition. Faith groups, labor unions, and other organizations have joined.

Ephros said the Solomon administration heard the council’s alarm on Monday and acted by Tuesday. The remaining $115 million is in the process of being moved.

“Jersey City’s money will not fund human rights abuses,” Ephros said.