Source: Max Siegelbaum, Documented, August 16, 2018
As state pension funds pull back from companies that profit from immigration detention, one New Jersey fund has sunk nearly a million dollars into the industry. According to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings, the NJ State Employees’ Deferred Compensation Plan purchased 18,000 shares of CoreCivic stock and 20,000 shares of Geo Group stock. The total investment was $964,000, a small portion of the entire fund, worth $559 million. According to SEC filings, the shares were purchased sometime between June 30 and Aug. 2, around the height of the “zero tolerance” policy period. Geo Group runs Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark and CoreCivic runs Elizabeth Detention Center, a low slung building in Elizabeth that houses about 300 detainees and an immigration court.
… In 2017, New York City became the first municipality to divest from the private prison industry. … Other cities and states have followed in removing public retirement funds from private prison stock. Philadelphia sold $1.2 million last October. Nashville, Tenn., has also moved to sell its holdings. Other cities like Cincinnati, Ohio, Portland, Ore. and Minneapolis have either divested or moved towards it. Universities like Columbia, Princeton and Stanford have active student divestment movements. …
Related:
Editorial: UC should divest from companies linked with immigration crisis
Source: Daily Bruin, August 19, 2018
President Donald Trump’s turbulent administration hit rock bottom following revelations that the federal government was separating families of asylum-seekers at the border. Among the list of offenses: caging children, coercing non-English speakers into signing esoteric forms and traumatizing minors seeking a place in this country. Californians have been crying foul ever since. The most prominent display of disdain has come from workers, who have called on state institutions to cut investments in companies linked to border detentions. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, a union representing University of California workers, called on the University in July to divest from contractors linked with the detention of immigrants at the border. And California teachers wrote a letter to administrators of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System earlier that month, demanding it divest from private prison companies and organizations involved in immigrant detention. …
Chicago teachers plan to divest private prison companies
Source: Meaghan Kilroy, Pensions & Investments, August 17, 2018
Chicago Public School Teachers’ Pension & Retirement Fund added private prison companies and businesses that operate immigration child detention centers to its list of prohibited investments, said Angela Miller-May, chief investment officer of the $9.8 billion pension fund, in an email. At its Thursday board meeting, the pension fund board directed investment staff to instruct the fund’s investment managers to “prudently liquidate public market holdings in (these) companies as soon as reasonably practical and in accordance with the managers’ fiduciary duties,” Ms. Miller-May wrote. The pension fund estimates it has approximately $548,000 invested in these companies. …