At Rally Outside Jamie Dimon's Home, Immigrant Rights Advocates Demand #BackersOfHate Stop Bankrolling For-Profit Prisons

Dozens of New Yorkers assembled outside JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon's home on Wednesday morning, demanding that his bank divest from private prisons which run immigrant detention centers. (Photo: @altochulo/Twitter)

At Rally Outside Jamie Dimon's Home, Immigrant Rights Advocates Demand #BackersOfHate Stop Bankrolling For-Profit Prisons

"JPMorgan Chase has to divest from private prisons and detention centers. You can no longer say you aren't aware of this issue!"

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon became the latest power broker to be directly confronted with the outrage of immigrant rights advocates, as CREDO Mobile, Make the Road New York, and other groups led a protest outside Dimon's Manhattan apartment building over his bank's financing of immigration detention centers.

Police began arresting some of the protesters at about 10:00am.

"Private detention companies like CoreCivic and the Geo Group continue to be financed by Corporate #BackersofHate like JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, who profit enormously from our communities' pain and the separation of families," read the event's Facebook page.

JPMorgan Chase has loaned tens of millions of dollars to CoreCivic, as well as underwriting numerous multi-million dollar corporate bonds for the company. The bank also has at least $72 million invested in the Geo Group. Both for-profit prisons have government contracts under which they run immigrant detention facilities that have filled up in recent weeks with parents and children who have been forcibly separated under President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" immigration policy.

Standing in the rain, immigrants and allies blocked morning traffic on Park Avenue, played recordings of crying children who have been held for weeks in detention centers, and held up signs reading, "Stop the Backers of Hate" and "Jamie Dimon: Stop Bankrolling Oppression!"

The demonstrators came armed with the signatures and letters of more than 100,000 immigrant rights advocates, demanding that JPMorgan Chase divest from the for-profit prisons.

"Jamie Dimon, in the past two years, 22 people have died in detention centers that you finance," said Ana Maria Archila of the Center for Popular Democracy. "JPMorgan Chase has to divest from private prisons and detention centers. You can no longer say you aren't aware of this issue!"

On Tuesday, dozens of demonstrators staged a similar action in New Jersey, where they delivered 70,000 petitions to the home of Wells Fargo board member Maria Morris demanding that the bank end its financing of for-profit prisons. The bank has investments in both GEO Group and Core Civic.

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