Protesters Maintain Focus on Citizens Bank

ARNIE ALPERT Photo

By Arnie Alpert, Active with the Activists

Arnie Alpert spent decades as a community organizer and educator in NH movements for social justice and peace. Officially retired from the American Friends Service Committee since 2020, he keeps his hands and feet in the activist world while writing about past and present social movements. You can reach him at arnie.alpert@indepthnh.org.

NORTH CONWAY - A day before 80 demonstrations were planned outside its branches, Citizens Bank announced it would withdraw its financial support from two private corporations which operate immigrant detention centers under contract to ICE. The demonstrations went ahead, anyway.

Referring to CoreCivic and GEO Group, the two companies, the Providence-based Citizens Financial Group said in a statement released Friday, Citizens has determined that it is now appropriate to exit the credit facilities for these clients. This is a business decision based on changed commercial circumstances and does not reflect any change in our view regarding these companies business models or operations.

To the De-ICE Citizens campaign, the announcement came as a major victory, achieved after several months of protests and calls for customers to close accounts at Citizens.

Today's announcement that Citizens Bank will exit its current lending relationships with private prison giants CoreCivic and The GEO Group is an important victory for the people who refused to let a major bank finance human suffering brought on by ICE detention activities of the current federal administration, said a statement from the De-ICE Citizens Bank Coalition. While Citizens Bank frames this exit as a purely business decision dictated by evolving commercial circumstances, the reality is clear: public conscience and community resistance matter and have paid off.

Outside the Citizens branch in North Conway, more than two dozen people lined the sidewalk with signs carrying slogans calling attention to the bank's ties to ICE and immigrant imprisonment. We look at this as adding a little pressure to make sure they follow through said Ned Beecher of Tamworth. His sign said, Thanks Citizens for Ending Your ICE Biz.

Beecher was one of four local residents who went inside for a conversation with the branch manager, Melissa Mullen. We really appreciate that the steps are being made in the right direction, Megan Chapman of Albany told her.

It actually really has nothing to do with us here, the banker replied.

We understand that it is not something you have direct control on, Beecher threw in. Chapman said her group, Mount Washington Valley Resistance, would not hold further demonstrations at the bank if Citizens keeps moving in the right direction. Mullen assured them she would pass on their message to the bank's regional manager.

Eight other demonstrations were held at Citizens Bank branches in New Hampshire, including in Dover, Portsmouth, W. Lebanon, Plymouth, Meredith, and Manchester, said Maggie Fogarty of the American Friends Service Committee, who helped coordinate the local component of the day of action.

Outside the North Conway branch, Judy Perez, a local resident, said, I am here because I really do not want ICE in our state, in our business. I really think all corporations should really take a hard look and not get involved in the first place.

Following a visit to the Eastern Slope Inn, which was observing its hundredth anniversary across the street, Anne and Bob Kantack of Jackson showed up with their own homemade signs. Citizens Bank has been funding ICE detention facilities, and we are appalled, Anne said. I am appalled with what ICE is doing: murdering American citizens, immigrants, just murdering people on the street for no reason.

Citizens Financial Group calls itself one of the nation's oldest and largest financial institutions, with $233.8 billion in assets as of June 30, 2026. The bank has approximately 1,000 branches in 14 states and the District of Columbia.

According to the De-ICE campaign, Citizens has played key roles helping GEO and CoreCivic access more than $2.5 billion in financing since 2012, including $100 million in January 2026.

GEO and Core Civic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America, are the two largest private prison companies in the country. De-ICE says they house more than half of the people currently held in detention.

GEO has been a client of the bank since 2018, and CoreCivic has been a client since 2011, the bank said in its statement. Among the services these companies offer is the operation of prisons under service contracts with the federal and various state governments. This includes contracting with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to operate detention facilities for those individuals scheduled for deportation. Both companies also own various facilities in addition to their service contracts.

Citizens has been disappointed that the activists have dragged it into what is largely a political matter, the company added.

We still need assurances in writing in the next ten days that Citizens Bank is terminating any and all banking relationships as well as future relationships with CoreCivic and GEO Group consistent with its peers who have already done so, De-ICE Citizens Bank stated.

According to another activist group, BoycottCitizens.org, nine banks, including JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America, have pledged they will not lend to private prison companies.