Free Republic

Citizens Bank said it will exit lending agreements with two private prison operators after receiving intense public scrutiny over those relationships. The financial group announced in a statement Friday that it would stop extending credit to GEO Group and CoreCivic. The companies, which collectively run about 130 facilities in the United States, contract with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to provide detention centers. Numerous progressive groups have protested Citizens Bank's business dealings with GEO Group and CoreCivic in recent months, calling on the company to sever ties through pickets outside bank branches and even a flyover banner across the...

Progressive billionaire Tom Steyer has been telling California voters he wants to “abolish ICE” despite investing nearly $90 million in a company behind the state’s largest immigration detention center. The California gubernatorial candidate has tried to swat off that criticism, but in a recent interview with the Sacramento Bee, he said it was a “mistake.” “We never had anything to do with running the company,” Steyer said. “But it was a mistake to think that that was a place where it was decent to make money.” Steyer founded a hedge fund named Farallon Capital Management in 1986. Under his management,...

... Joe Biden on Tuesday signed four executive actions pertaining to racial equity, including phasing out the use of private prisons at the federal level. "We have never fully lived up to the founding principles of this nation, to state the obvious, that all people are created equal and have a right to be treated equally throughout their lives," Biden said just before signing the actions. ...