The campaign to impel Citizens Bank to divest from companies building and operating private prisons for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the Parkway is continuing every week, either in Roslindale or West Roxbury (and across the country).

The campaign started in the winter, with protesters braving snowy conditions to make their voices heard, and participants continued this past weekend at the Citizens location in West Roxbury.

“Citizens is the only big bank, as we understand it, funding these companies,” said West Roxbury/Roslindale Progressives organizer Rachel Poliner. “There are eight other big banks that have refused to fund the two big companies, GeoGroup and Core Civic, building and operating these horrible prisons, including the one in Dilly Texas, that’s the one feeding kids food with worms in it.”

The Dilly Detention Center has come under fire for mistreatment of those incarcerated there – https://gvimes.link/dillydeten – where detainees describe unsafe and unsanitary conditions, including mold in the food, worms, as mentioned above, impotatable water and prolonged detention.

The Department of Homeland Security has refuted these claims, stating “Certified dieticians evaluate meals.”

“Of course there is profit there,” Poliner said. “And Citizens is like, ‘Okay.’ They loan to these companies. And we have people who didn’t know and are upset. Nobody has learned about this situation and thought it was a good idea.”

Poliner said they are planning to continue the protests until the bank divests from those companies.

“The Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO) is involved in this protest and they just pulled out their first $1 million from Citizens,” she said. “Members of various faith communities have had accounts there, because Citizens used to do very intentional, community-based stuff. And GBIO was part of arranging for that. And so GBIO spoke at Citizens shareholders meeting and asked them to stop funding these companies, and gave them a deadline for meeting on the issue before for pulling out the first million. And they didn’t meet that deadline. I men it was just a meeting and they didn’t even do that.”

Poliner said the faith coalition in Cleveland, Ohio, is also now involved, along with many other organizations around the country. She said she’s hopeful the campaign will work.

“The Disney boycott only took a couple of days, the Spotify boycott took one month, until their shares dropped and they stopped taking ads for ICE recruitment,” she said. “So this one? We don’t know, but there certainly is a lot of public pressure on them. I can’t imagine they want to be known as the ICE Bank.”

Resident Patrick Young said he comes every week with Boston Indivisible.

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“They have neighborhood groups and we’re the West Roxbury Roslindale group and this is our group, but this has gotten much bigger,” he said. “It’s going on all over the city, all over the northeast and the mid Atlantic. It’s really taken off, and generally it makes me feel good that we’re doing this boycott-based action, but you really have to commit to it. And that means showing up regularly.”

Resident Ed Henry said he agreed with Young, and that he came to it through a different road.

“My husband got his citizenship last summer, and we had an easier time, I think, than most, but it’s still a terrifying, expensive and horrible process,” he said. “Just the fear of this process, and let alone the fear of people being kidnapped off the streets and our neighbors disappearing. What history tells us in times like these is that what stops this and reversing it is people showing up, when they can and where they can.”

Resident Sally Muspratt said she came out because she recently discovered Citizens Bank’s funding.

“They’re funding these concentration camps and so I’m taking my money out of the bank,” she said. “And so are all my friends I’m telling about it, because nobody knew. I’m thrilled though that we’re coming out every week to protest.”

Muspratt said she was recently encouraged to see other groups pulling money out of Citizens, like the Brown University Union pulling $500,000, and GBIO’s commitment to pull more funds if necessary – https://gvimes.link/citdivest

“It’s effective,” she said. “Who would have thought that anything was effective with such a huge organization?”