Updated BreakFree research: The Swiss Investors into the ICE System
3 months ago, BreakFree Suisse uncovered the investment data from 10 leading Swiss financial players into 5 key service providers to the ICE US federal agency: Palantir, AT&T, Geo Group, CoreCivic and CACI International. These companies are key components of the ICE support chain of surveillance, repression and/or deportation.
The 10 investors are: UBS, Swiss National Bank (SNB), Zurich Cantonal Bank (ZKB), Pictet, Lombard Odier, Swiss Life, Zurich Insurance, Vaud Cantonal Bank (BVC), Julius Baer and Union Bancaire Privée (UBP). In doing so, they are violating their own human rights protection commitments. They are also taking important reputational risks and are contributing by their silence as shareholders to the ongoing violation of fundamental human principles by the ICE forces.
Main takeaways:
> UBS is now the third or fourth-largest shareholder of the GEO Group, which is the second contractor of ICE and in which the new ICE director was a high level executive during 9 years. Other Swiss investors such as the SNB, the BCV and UBP increased their investment into some ICE contractors shareholding structure.
> Internal leaks have revealed widespread human rights violations: 12,000 children with U.S. citizenship saw their parents deported during the first seven months of 2025; a substantial number of internal emails show that acts of violence against migrants in private detention centers increased significantly between 2024 and 2025; more than 4,300 court rulings have deemed ICE detentions illegal, yet the agency has not changed its practices, even as the administration targets the judiciary that opposes its directives; The GEO Group is facing seven lawsuits in federal court on suspicion of forced labor; finally, according to a senior ICE official, Palantir reportedly provided ICE with a list of 20 million targeted individuals.
> The overall trend shows serious shortcomings in accountability and risk perception from the swiss investors side, affecting swiss financial centre credibility, 3 years after Credit Suisse fall, even though UBS is still implicated in the case of looted Jewish assets, and decades after the collaboration of the two major Swiss banks with the apartheid regime gold trading system was brought to light.
> In absence of any real transparency and in ligh of several key contradictions & unheard official recommendations, the “passive investment” argument used by some of the investors involved sounds like a stalling tactic.
Notes to editors:
- The full report (in French) is available here.
- Impact of the February and March version of the research: The Minneapolis City Council used it to vote a resolution demanding european investors such as UBS, the SNB, Amundi or ABP to divest from GEO Group, Corecivic, Palantir and CACI International.
- Media coverage of the previous data analysis : RTS SRF / SwissInfo / RTS Tout un Monde / Le Temps / Le Courrier / 24Heures / La Tribune de Genève / Blick / Watson / Reuters
- The NGO Stand Earth published a follow-up to our research on Canadian and USA investors: https://stand.earth/press-releases/canadian-public-pensions-canada-banks-profit-35-billion-ice-contractors/, and in the media: https://globalnews.ca/news/11751185/canadian-banks-pension-funds-billions-ice-contractors/
