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Video Credit: Financial Services Committee
During a House Financial Services Committee hearing, rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) asked Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan why the bank finances the ‘caging of children’.
“I am interested in the human rights abuses and environmental disasters that some say are financed by your bank, Wells Fargo.”
“Why was the bank involved in the caging of children and financing the caging of children, to begin with?” she asked referring to the Wells Fargo’s relationships with two private prison companies, GEO Group, and CoreCivic, which have been involved with immigration detention.
Tim Sloan replied: “I don’t know how to answer that question because we weren’t.”
“For a period of time, we were involved in financing one of the firms.
We aren’t anymore. I’m not familiar with the specific assertions that you’re making, but we weren’t directly involved in that.”
Ocasio-Cortez responded: “Okay, so these companies run private detention facilities run by ICE, which is involved in caging children, but I’ll move on.”
Last year, more than 2,700 children were separated from their parents because of the Trump administration’s immigration policy.
Ocasio-Cortez also addressed the bank’s financing of the Dakota Access Pipeline. She asked: ‘Hypothetically if there was a leak from the Dakota Access Pipeline, why shouldn’t Wells Fargo pay for the cleanup of it, since it paid for the construction of the pipeline itself?’
Sloan said that the pipeline is not operated by the bank and more than a dozen banks financed it.
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