CoreCivic and The GEO Group, a pair of despicable for-profit corporations that own and operate U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers, have a financial partner in Rhode Island to help them terrorize people of color.

Let’s examine what Rhode Island-based Citizens Bank, one of the 20 largest banks in the United States, is helping to fund.

The Florida-based GEO Group is one of the largest publicly-traded operators of private prisons and immigration detention centers in the world. Tennessee-based CoreCivic is the largest private prison operator in the United States, managing some 70 correctional and detention facilities. Both entities generate billions in revenue primarily through government contracts — i.e., taxpayer money — with agencies such as ICE and the U.S. Marshals Service.

Since January 2025, some 50 people have died in ICE custody, with about half of those deaths occurring in gulags operated by private prison contractors such as CoreCivic and GEO Group. These lock-them-all-up companies have been accused of detaining people in inhumane conditions, where people are allegedly brutalized, denied medical care, and subjected to sleep deprivation.

CoreCivic runs a family detention facility in Dilley, Texas, where there has been confirmed measles cases and claims of worms or mold in children’s food. GEO Group has faced allegations that detainees at its Aurora, Colo., facility were required to work without pay or risk up to 72 hours in solitary confinement.

Delaney Hall, an infamous ICE detention camp in New Jersey, is owned and operated by GEO Group. The people imprisoned there haven’t been convicted of any crime, but are forced to work for about $1 a day. They are reportedly caged in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. The food they are given is often spoiled, and sometimes has maggots. Detainees have alleged they have been beaten and pepper-sprayed. The Department of Homeland Security and GEO Group have denied full access to state health inspectors.

The regime and its henchmen don’t want anyone investigating their activities in these dreadful facilities, because their inhumanity is rewarding, both professionally and personally.

On GEO Group’s quarterly earnings call last month, CEO George Zoley called litigation against the regime’s work camps “unprecedented” and “unconstitutional.”

“There’s been litigation regarding overseeing medical services, food services, general cleanliness, etc,” he whined. “It’s really unprecedented … I believe it’s fundamentally unconstitutional.”

It’s not unconstitutional to ensure people who have been illegally locked up are being treated humanely. It’s actually unconstitutional to kidnap people off the street just because they have brown skin or speak Spanish. Caging children is barbaric.

But under the war-starting, strait-closing, cage-fighting, society-dividing, constantly-lying D.C. regime, cruelty is profitable. The regime’s mass deportation crime spree has meant millions of dollars in new contracts for GEO Group and CoreCivic.

And when these brutal businesses need a loan to expand their terror enterprises, Citizens Bank makes the Benjamins readily available, like passing Go in Monopoly.

Organizers for the De-ICE Citizens Bank Coalition claim Citizens Bank has provided CoreCivic and GEO Group with a total of $2.5 billion in financing.

Several major banks, including a few of the top funders of Big Oil, have cut financial ties with private prison companies, including CoreCivic and GEO Group, amid growing public pressure. Citizens Bank isn’t among them.

In January, the bank headquartered in Rhode Island increased GEO Group’s borrowing capacity by $100 million, according to a securities filing. The Florida-based company now has a $550 million line of credit with Citizens Bank, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

SEC filings show CoreCivic borrowed $500 million from Citizens Bank in 2024.

Zoley and former CoreCivic head honcho Damon Hininger have each made political donations totaling more than a million dollars, including contributions to the Republican National Committee and to PACs affiliated with the Oval Office Monster. Their investments have paid off, bigly.

Early last year, Zoley called the regime’s mass deportation plans an “unprecedented opportunity.” He said GEO Group stands to gain up to $1 billion in additional revenue from detaining and surveilling undocumented immigrants.

In just the first four months of this year, the company came close to reaching a billion in revenue.

For the first quarter of 2026, GEO Group reported total revenues of $705 million, a 17% increase from the first quarter in 2025. Last year, Zoley received an estimated $15 million in compensation and Hininger was paid an estimated $7.2 million. In 2025, Citizens Bank CEO Bruce Van Saun received an estimated $12.5 million in compensation.

If you, like me, find Citizens Bank’s financial ties to these concentration-camp companies revolting, we are not alone.

Last month the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization vowed to withdraw $1 million from its Citizens Bank accounts after Van Saun allegedly went back on a promise to meet with members of the Roxbury, Mass.-based nonprofit to discuss the bank’s relationship with CoreCivic and GEO Group.

The Greater Boston Interfaith Organization’s pledge is part of a larger effort that has been branded Not with Our Money, Citizens. Brown University’s Graduate Labor Organization said in late April it would withdraw $500,000 from Citizens Bank because of its relationships with CoreCivic and GEO Group.

Jersey City, N.J., is divesting from Citizens Bank because of its financial ties to the private-prison industry.

“Jersey City should not be in any way supporting organizations or institutions financing the incarceration and illegal profit-making machine threatening our neighbors and immigrant communities,” council member Rolando Lavarro said during a City Council meeting this month. “It’s against everything we stand for.”

Calls to boycott Citizens Bank are growing louder. Keep up the pressure.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.