Activists Follow the Money Behind ICE Detention to Citizens Bank
Citizens Bank is facing pressure to cut financial ties with GEO Group and CoreCivic, private prison companies that operate ICE detention facilities.
🎥 A June 2026 De-ICE protest video shows demonstrators calling on Citizens Bank to cut financial ties with private prison companies tied to ICE detention.
Activists gathered outside Citizens Bank branches in New Jersey, California, and other locations on June 6 as part of a coordinated campaign demanding that the bank cut financial ties with private prison companies that operate ICE detention facilities.
The protests targeted Citizens Bank’s financial relationships with GEO Group and CoreCivic, two private prison companies that operate detention facilities used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Organizers with the De-ICE Citizens Bank campaign argue that banking relationships are not neutral when they help sustain the companies behind immigration detention infrastructure.
At the bank’s Bloomfield, New Jersey, location, demonstrators arrived late Saturday morning to protest Citizens Bank’s ties to GEO Group and CoreCivic. Similar actions were also reported in Montclair, South Orange, Maplewood, West Caldwell, and other locations as part of a wider national pressure campaign.
The demand was direct: Citizens Bank should stop financing private prison companies connected to ICE detention.
Activists say Citizens has played a key role in helping GEO Group and CoreCivic access more than $2.5 billion in financing since 2012, including loans, credit arrangements, bond underwriting, and other financial services. The De-ICE Citizens Bank campaign says the bank’s involvement continued as recently as January 2026, when Citizens helped provide another $100 million in financing.
Those numbers are the center of the campaign.
This is not only a protest about one bank branch, one detention facility, or one day of demonstrations. It is a campaign built around the argument that ICE detention depends on a wider financial system. Private prison companies need contracts, facilities, staffing, transportation, credit, loans, bond deals, and banking relationships. Activists are trying to make those relationships visible.
Citizens Bank is not accused of operating ICE facilities directly. The article’s accountability question is different: if banks help finance the companies that operate detention centers, should those banks be part of the public record when detainees, families, and communities document harm inside those facilities?
That question has become more urgent as Delaney Hall in Newark remains at the center of protests over ICE detention conditions.
GEO Group operates Delaney Hall, a privately run immigration detention facility in Newark. In recent weeks, detainees and advocates have raised concerns about overcrowding, poor food, inadequate medical care, and other conditions inside the facility. Detainees have launched a hunger strike, and protests outside Delaney Hall have led to more than 80 arrests as demonstrators pressed for attention to conditions inside.
That is where the money trail becomes human.
When activists say Citizens Bank should “De-ICE” its financing, they are not talking about an abstract investment dispute. They are pointing to the financial relationships behind companies that operate places like Delaney Hall, where detainees and advocates have described conditions that have already produced hunger and labor strike actions, family concern, and repeated public demonstrations.
Families and advocates have raised alarms about Delaney Hall, including allegations of inadequate medical treatment, inedible food, visitation restrictions, and fear among relatives trying to reach detained loved ones. GEO Group and federal officials have denied wrongdoing or disputed claims about conditions, but the facility has become a flashpoint in the national debate over immigration detention.
The Citizens Bank protests are part of an attempt to move that debate upstream.
Instead of only protesting outside detention facilities, activists are targeting the financial institutions that help private prison companies raise money and maintain operations. The De-ICE Citizens Bank campaign says thousands of people from more than 150 grassroots groups have taken action across the country to pressure the bank over its role in the private detention system.
That strategy is not new.
In 2019, several major financial institutions moved away from financing private prison companies after sustained public pressure and reputational scrutiny. Activists now argue Citizens Bank has continued relationships that other institutions already treated as politically and publicly toxic.
Julie Cohen, an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker involved in the Bloomfield protest, has argued that account closures and public pressure are necessary because the bank’s ordinary customer-facing image does not reflect the consequences of its financing relationships. In her public advocacy, Cohen pointed to Citizens Bank’s size, assets, and role as a financier of CoreCivic and GEO Group, urging depositors to reconsider whether their money should remain with the institution.
That is the logic behind the campaign’s account-closure push.
Organizers are not only asking people to attend demonstrations. They are asking customers, depositors, and investors to use their financial relationship with Citizens Bank as leverage. The campaign encourages people to withdraw funds, close accounts, contact executives, and pressure the bank publicly.
Citizens Bank has defended its position.
A Citizens Bank spokesperson told NJ.com that the company is “a relationship-based bank with a strong record of corporate responsibility” and said the bank respects the right to peaceful protest. The spokesperson also said Citizens is proud of its commitment to clients, customers, and communities across the country and across industries, adding that “it is not the role of banks to set public policy” and that the bank’s responsibility is to follow the law and apply its standards consistently as it serves clients.
That is the bank’s frame: Citizens says it follows the law, serves clients consistently, and does not set public policy.
Activists reject that as too narrow.
Their argument is that financing is not passive when it helps sustain companies whose business model depends on detention. If GEO Group and CoreCivic rely on access to credit, bond markets, underwriting, and banking services, then the institutions helping provide that access are not outside the system. They are part of the infrastructure that allows it to continue.
That does not mean a bank operates a detention center. It means the public has a reason to scrutinize whether banking relationships make detention expansion possible.
The campaign’s strongest point is that ICE detention is not held together by one agency alone. It is built through layers: federal contracts, private operators, local facilities, political decisions, staffing companies, transportation systems, and financial institutions. Activists are trying to map those layers in public.
The financing data gives the campaign its force.
According to De-ICE Citizens Bank, Citizens has helped GEO Group and CoreCivic access more than $2.5 billion in financing since 2012. AFSC Investigate has also identified Citizens JMP Securities as a lead underwriter for a $450 million CoreCivic bond issued in 2024, further tying Citizens-linked financial activity to the private prison sector.
That level of financing changes the story.
Without the numbers, the protests could be dismissed as symbolic. With the numbers, the article becomes a record of how detention infrastructure is financed and how activists are trying to disrupt the money behind it.
The public harm is not limited to what happens inside a detention facility. It includes the financial relationships that make those facilities viable, the contracts that keep them open, and the banks that help private prison companies access capital.
That is why Delaney Hall matters in this article, but it should not swallow the whole article.
Delaney Hall shows the human stakes. Citizens Bank shows the financial route. GEO Group and CoreCivic show the private detention industry. Activists are connecting all three so the public can see how immigration detention is sustained beyond the gates of any single facility.
The campaign is also trying to make customer identity part of the pressure.
For a community bank or regional banking brand, public trust matters. Activists are betting that customers will not want their deposits, investments, or everyday banking relationships connected to companies operating ICE detention facilities. That is why the campaign includes account closures, public pledges, phone calls, emails, branch protests, and social media pressure.
Citizens Bank says it is not responsible for setting public policy.
Activists are asking a different question: when a bank helps finance companies that profit from detention, can it separate itself from the consequences of that financing?
That question is now part of the public record.
If ICE detention depends on private prison operators, and private prison operators depend on financing, then the banks behind those relationships belong in the accountability trail too.
This report is part of an ongoing public record on how ICE detention is financed, who profits from private incarceration, and how banks, contractors, and political systems help sustain detention infrastructure.
Americans Against ICE follows the money behind immigration enforcement because abuse does not begin and end at the detention center door. It also moves through contracts, credit, loans, facilities, and the institutions that make those systems possible.
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Call it what it is, tyranny.