UC Berkeley Students Angry About On-Campus Bank’s Ties to ICE
“students are calling on Berkeley to completely sever all ties”
This is no different than student activists getting angry over various schools with ties to fossil fuel companies. It’s childish.
The Washington Examiner reports:
UC Berkeley students upset on-campus bank has ties to ICE
Students at the University of California, Berkeley are furious after finding out that their on-campus bank may have financial holdings in prisons associated with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE.
According to an editorial in The Daily Californian, students are calling on Berkeley to completely sever all ties with “Bank of the West,” the official on-campus bank whose parent company is BNP Paribas, the world’s 8th largest bank with holdings in 75 countries.
While BNP Paribas has holdings in numerous companies spread all around the world, students from Berkeley were shocked and horrified to learn that the bank owns more than $1 million in shares in CoreCivic Inc., as well as GEO Group Inc. Both companies are contracted to operate a number of correctional facilities within the United States, and more than 20 of which are contracted by ICE.
The school’s ties to BNP Paribas were discovered by senior Camila Elizabet Aguirre-Aguilar, who found the link while spending time perusing a list of companies with holdings in the GEO Group.
“I thought it’d be really ironic if the school’s bank had any investments,” said Aguirre-Aguilar. “I saw BNP Paribas, and I thought that looked familiar … It was just a thought that it would be ironic in a really tragic way, and then that turned out to be how it is.”
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