|
We look at a growing boycott against Citizens Bank amid a campaign to pressure the corporation to divest from financing CoreCivic and GEO Group, two of the nation's largest private operators of ICE jails. An interfaith coalition of dozens of religious groups in Boston said Citizens Bank has failed to adequately address its concern about financing private prisons, so the group has withdrawn $1 million from its estimated $14 million account with the bank and threatened to keep removing funds until its demands are met.
Filmmaker Julie Cohen and journalist Paul Barrett, who are married, recently wrote an opinion piece about closing their account at Citizens Bank over its complicity with Delaney Hall and other ICE jails.
"Over more than a dozen years, Citizens Bank has arranged for and helped provide some $2 billion in financing for GEO Group and CoreCivic," says Barrett, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg Businessweek. "Without that money, these corporations literally could not function."
"The idea is to basically use our collective economic power to speak out about those who are aiding and abetting" the immigrant detention system in the United States, adds Cohen. "A lot of what's going on in these ICE detention facilities is not lawful because … immigrant neighbors, most of whom have not committed any crime beyond immigration violations, are being held there without due process."
|
|
Two officers who defended the Capitol on January 6, 2021, have filed a lawsuit in federal court to block the creation of a $1.8 billion so-called anti-weaponization fund. Former Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police Department officer Daniel Hodges are bringing the lawsuit because the fund could be used to compensate the Capitol rioters who attacked them and their colleagues. Both officers say they have faced continuous credible threats since that day.
"This slush fund is going to be used to pay the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers," says Brendan Ballou, CEO of the Public Integrity Project, who is representing officers Dunn and Hodges. "It is going to give a presidential endorsement to these people, saying that not only … will they be put beyond the reach of the law, but they will actually be financially rewarded for doing so." Ballou is also a former federal prosecutor who spent two years prosecuting January 6 Capitol rioters.
|
|
 U.S. President Donald Trump fully backs Senate Republicans' police reform bill unveiled earlier on Wednesday, White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany told reporters at a briefing.
|
|
