Montclair Pulls $91 Million From Citizens Bank Over ICE Ties

Montclair Township Council voted unanimously Tuesday to pull $91.1 million out of Citizens Bank. The New Jersey town is protesting the bank’s financing of two companies that run detention centers for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The vote strikes Citizens from Montclair’s list of approved depositories.

Citizens Financial Group, a $233.8 billion-asset regional bank, announced its own exit three days later. It attributed the move to the federal government’s purchases of the two companies’ detention facilities. The coalition that pushed Montclair to divest calls that explanation convenient.

Montclair Strikes Citizens From Its Bank List

The July 14 resolution tells Montclair’s chief financial officer to move “all Township funds from Citizens Bank as soon as is practicable.” It formally removes Citizens from the roster of banks the township is allowed to use.

Town records show the deposits equal more than four-fifths of Montclair’s $106.8 million annual budget, enough to make Citizens one of the town’s largest banking relationships. The resolution leans on Montclair’s self-declared status as a “welcoming town” and on the Montclair Trust Act, adopted in April, which bars township staff from spending time or money helping carry out ICE operations.

Montclair joins Jersey City, which voted last month to divest, and neighboring Bloomfield discussed a similar step the night before Montclair’s vote.

I believe that this is the right thing to do. We can make the conscious choice not to be complicit in putting our residents’ taxpayer dollars into a financial institution that financially supports these concentration camp private prisons.

Susan Shin Andersen, Montclair’s deputy mayor, said this during Tuesday’s meeting.

Delaney Hall, Elizabeth Detention Center and the Families Named

The resolution builds a specific financial case. Citizens has financed the private detention industry since at least 2012, it says, helping GEO Group and CoreCivic, the country’s two largest private detention operators, draw more than $2.5 billion in financing. Citizens added $100 million to GEO Group’s credit line in January alone.

GEO Group operates Delaney Hall in Newark under a $1 billion federal contract. Lawmakers, state officials and immigrant advocates have alleged poor living conditions, inadequate medical care and a lack of transparency there. CoreCivic runs the Elizabeth Detention Center, the state’s oldest immigration facility. The resolution states plainly that Montclair families detained at both sites “have been torn apart and irreparably harmed.”

Montclair Indivisible, the local group that drove the campaign, told NJ.com it began investigating Citizens early this year after learning of the bank’s ties to the two detention operators. A public-records request then showed how many nearby towns, including Montclair, banked there. Members have picketed outside Delaney Hall for close to a year and outside Montclair’s Citizens branch every other Saturday.

“We are proud that our Township of Montclair … made the decision to divest and ensure that our tax dollars are going into a financial institution that reflects the values of our town,” members Laura Kenny and Carol Costello wrote.

Why Is Citizens Really Cutting Ties?

Citizens says its exit has nothing to do with the boycott. The federal government has been buying the physical detention buildings, the bank says, and that purchase, not the pressure campaign, shrank GEO Group’s and CoreCivic’s need for a lender. The coalition that spent a year organizing the boycott calls the timing suspicious anyway.

Citizens said in its statement that the government’s purchases have “the effect of reducing the required capital of the companies going forward, as they will largely operate as service companies.” The bank added: “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.”

CoreCivic sold two California properties to the federal government this year, and GEO Group’s chief executive told investors on a May earnings call that the company was weighing similar sales to ICE. The pattern lines up with a federal budget that suddenly has money to spend: the 2025 reconciliation law quadrupled ICE’s detention budget, adding $11.25 billion to ICE’s budget annually through 2029.

That shift matters beyond one bank. If Washington keeps buying the buildings, the industry needs commercial lenders less, which would blunt the leverage municipal boycotts are built on. The Friday announcement also drops Citizens into its own fight over federal debanking rules, since the bank’s statement cited requirements limiting how banks can deny services over political considerations.

The Divestment Math Across New Jersey

The De-ICE Citizens Bank coalition, which organized the pressure campaign, says Montclair and Jersey City have pulled more than $330 million combined. That is a rounding error against Citizens’ $233.8 billion balance sheet, which is part of why the campaign has widened well past New Jersey.

Coalition spokesperson Peyton Fleming told NJ.com the campaign launched in January with two dozen protests and has since grown to hundreds nationwide, including a “Not with Our Money, Citizens” effort. Organizers argue the real leverage is bigger than any single town, noting cities and states collectively park more than $750 billion in combined municipal deposits with banks nationwide.

The stakes for GEO Group and CoreCivic keep climbing regardless. Both companies’ stocks climbing 56% and 73% since the election reflect the industry’s bet that the Trump administration’s detention push only expands from here.

The Banks That Fled This Fight First

This exact standoff already played out once. Activist pressure forced a wave of bank exits from the private prison industry back in 2019, and Citizens sat every one of them out.

• JPMorgan Chase announced in March 2019 it would stop new loans to CoreCivic and GEO Group, becoming the first bank to stop new loans to the industry.
• Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Fifth Third Bank, PNC Bank, Truist Bank, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo made similar declarations by the end of that year.
• Regions Bank followed in 2021, amid the public reaction to the police killing of George Floyd.

Citizens Financial Group never joined any of those lists. GEO Group and CoreCivic replaced the departing lenders with institutions less exposed to consumer pressure, including Nomura Holdings, the Japanese investment bank that signed on with CoreCivic in December 2019, according to SEC filings. Citizens kept lending straight through, and by this January had grown GEO Group’s credit line to $550 million.

Boston Pulpits, a Union and a Growing List

New Jersey wasn’t first. Interfaith clergy under the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization pulled $1 million from Citizens in April and another $2 million in June, draining an account that once held nearly $13 million. Brown University’s graduate student union withdrew close to $500,000 that same month, and two Massachusetts state representatives pledged personal withdrawals worth more than $100,000 combined.

Fleming said the coalition is now pressing municipalities in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, including Boston. CoreCivic has fought back in Washington as well as at the branch counter; the company lobbied Congress on a Fair Access to Banking Act that would bar lenders from cutting off legal industries.

The money at stake keeps growing with detention itself. ICE pays roughly $165 a day for each person detained, and more arrests mean more revenue for the two operators, regardless of which bank is holding their credit line.

Eleven Banks Now Compete for Montclair’s Business

Citizens defended its record before Friday’s announcement. “We are disappointed that Montclair Township (has) taken this step because the facts show that we have a strong record of corporate responsibility,” said Peter Lucht, the bank’s head of corporate communications. “Citizens does not set public policy, nor do we make decisions based on political affiliation or ideology.” Lucht said the bank provided $2 billion in community development funding last year and supported 140 nonprofit partners serving immigrant communities.

The coalition isn’t satisfied yet. In a statement, it called Friday’s exit “an important victory” but said it will keep campaigning until Citizens provides assurances that it will end all current and future banking relationships with GEO Group and CoreCivic. Fleming said the pressure won’t ease “until the bank cuts all financial ties, all financial agreements, with GEO Group and CoreCivic.”

Montclair Township Manager Stephen D. Marks, whose office will carry out the divestment, told NJ.com the town has prequalified 11 banks and is still soliciting proposals. He declined to weigh in on the decision itself. “The mayor and council set policy,” he said. “The municipal administration stands to implement all such policies.”

The coalition has a regional day of action planned for today, with protests set for Citizens branches across the Northeast, the same weekend Montclair’s finance office starts working through its shortlist of eleven replacement banks.