April 10, 2026
Dear Citizens Bank,
On March 3, 2026, after twenty-seven years, I closed my account with you. I was never expecting to do this. I was a happy and trusting customer. I opened my account when I was in college, and you stayed by my side as I went to job after job, apartment after apartment, all the way to helping me pay my school loans off in 2019. But recently, I learned something about you that I should have known all along: for some time, your parent company, Citizens Financial Group, had been helping to finance private prisons. In fact, around the same time that I paid off my school loans, other banks started to sever ties with these private prison companies, but you didn’t.
One of my first jobs was as a Spanish-speaking social worker. Before ICE detention centers were used as they are now, I remember, back in 2005, how scared my clients were of ICE. They were so scared sometimes that they didn’t trust me to come into their homes for visits. So when I learned that your parent company not only finances private prisons, but is also helping to finance Core Civic, one of the major companies who has a contract with ICE, something forever changed inside of me. To continue to bank with you would be to go against my values. I couldn’t go about my daily business knowing that my money was wrapped up in detaining people like my former clients, who had made the choice between staying in a country that might kill them or committing a civil offense by coming here illegally. But it was even worse. When I looked into the relationship further, I learned that people and companies are making millions of dollars from ICE revenue – keeping people locked up.
To continue to bank with you would be to go against my values. I couldn’t go about my daily business knowing that my money was wrapped up in detaining people like my former clients, who had made the choice between staying in a country that might kill them or committing a civil offense by coming here illegally.
At first I tried to talk myself out of it. It would be such a hassle to transfer all my automatic payments. Maybe I could just write a letter to you suggesting you change your mind. But I couldn’t, because now I’m a teacher, and many of my students are the children of immigrants whose status is not known to me. Your values are no longer, or never were, similar to my values.
When I went to close my account, the teller, a woman of color, asked me why, and I told her. She said slowly that she did not know. She also said I was the second person that week that was closing their Citizens account because of connections to ICE. She asked me to write down the name “Core Civic” because she was sure her kids would know of the company. I can’t help but wonder if she or her parents are immigrants, unknowingly tied to a company that invests in locking up people like her.
So, while it’s too late for me, it’s not too late for your bank to do the right thing for your customers. Live by your mission statement: “To help our customers, colleagues and communities reach their potential.” Our communities can’t reach their potential if some people are profiting from other people being locked up.
With hope,
Crista C.