“My whole life I’ve been told these stories by my community,” said one young Jewish activist. “Those alarms are going off in my head.”

Leigh Vogel for BuzzFeed News Participants of the Never Again Means #ShutDownICE in DC protest at the entrance to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters July 16.

In a messy Airbnb in northeast Washington, DC, Alyssa Rubin, 25, and Ben Doernberg, 30, passed a stale loaf of challah back and forth on Monday as they planned how they were going to shut down ICE. “Okay, let’s all share whatever updates we have aaand...your favorite ice cream flavor!” said Rubin, introducing an impromptu icebreaker during one of their regular video conference calls with other organizers. Surrounded by open suitcases, an air mattress, at least one Popeyes bag, and a mishmash of chips and Cheez-It containers, the two-story row house in DC’s Shaw neighborhood could easily be the site of a sleepaway camp reunion. Instead, this week it served as headquarters for Never Again Action, a brand-new movement of young American Jews calling for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be shut down and the closure of immigrant detention centers nationwide. About 15 activists from cities all over the US stayed in the house this week — sleeping on mismatched couches, a futon, and the floor — to pull off their biggest action yet: a march on Tuesday from the National Mall to ICE headquarters, where they planned to quite literally shut the building down. There’s been a lot of talk in recent months about Jewish identity and anti-Semitism in the US. First-year Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar had to apologize in February for tweets against the pro-Israel lobby that she later seemed to acknowledge could be interpreted as containing “anti-Semitic tropes” — although she denied this was her intention. Then last month, Omar’s fellow “Squad” member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez drew backlash from Republicans and Democrats when she used the term “concentration camps” to describe immigrant detention centers. Vice President Mike Pence said she had “cheapened” the memory of the Holocaust “to advance some left-wing political narrative,” while New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called it a “wholly inappropriate comparison.” Even the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC took offense. But while politicians debate semantics, and the media discusses whether Jewish identity is being co-opted as a political “shield,” these young Jews are instead taking action. For them, there are clear and painful parallels between their relatives’ past and the present treatment of undocumented immigrants — and their Jewish identity is compelling them to do something about it. So over the course of just three weeks, they’ve been working day and night to build a movement to upend Trump’s immigration policy and close the detention centers once and for all. “I don’t care what we call them,” said Rubin of the centers. “I care that we stop them.”

Leigh Vogel for BuzzFeed News Alyssa Rubin and Ben Doernberg work on communications details for the Never Again Means #ShutDownICE in DC protest, just minutes before the event is set to begin.

Never Again Action is about as new as movements come. It started on June 24 when Serena Adlerstein, a 25-year-old organizer in Michigan with immigrant rights group Movimiento Cosecha, posted a Facebook status asking if any Jews would be down to protest at a detention center. They got on their first call the same night. “It was kind of just this offhand Facebook post … and then people starting commenting like, ‘Yes, but actually!’” Adlerstein said. “I think we could all sense the political moment we were in, and we were like, ‘If we’re going to actually do this, we need to do an action fairly quickly.’” Less than a week later, on June 30, 36 people were arrested during Never Again Action’s first protest when they blocked entrances to a detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey. They were subsequently charged with obstruction of a public passage, issued a summons, and released, authorities told NJ.com. After that, the protests just kept coming. In Boston earlier this month, more than 1,000 marched from the New England Holocaust Memorial to the Suffolk County House of Correction, where ICE keeps some of its detainees. In San Francisco, they protested outside Nancy Pelosi’s office, chanting “Never again is now” and “Until you close the camps, we will close your building.” Protests have also been held in Philadelphia, the Los Angeles area, Chicago, and Buffalo. Some of the young adult leaders have previous organizing experience through other Jewish social action groups. But taking on a project on this level — trying to build a brand-new national movement in Trump’s America — is a different beast. Almost like a mantra that they repeat as if to remind themselves, they frequently say that they’re “really building the plane as [they] fly it.” They now have a Slack team with nearly 200 members. In one channel, called #i-want-to-do-a-thing, people volunteer for any task, big or small, that gets dropped in. Evan Feldberg-Bannatyne, a 21-year-old student at Earlham College in Indiana, serves as the group’s fundraising lead, despite having no previous experience doing that kind of work. On one of the first Never Again Action video calls, he volunteered to take on the role simply because no one else had. The next day, he set up a GoFundMe campaign with the intention of raising about $25,000 to pay bail for those risking arrest at the New Jersey protest. They wound up raising $180,000. “On the way back from the [New Jersey protest], I was just refreshing every five minutes watching the GoFundMe tick up and up and up,” he said. Now, the 21-year-old is in charge of all the group’s financial operations, running a team that handles budgeting, reimbursements, and fiscal sponsorships, which he describes as “super dry stuff but super important.” “This is really how I practice my Judaism — through social justice,” he said.

Leigh Vogel for BuzzFeed News Participants of the Never Again Means #ShutDownICE in DC protest organize signs before the start of the event.

Leigh Vogel for BuzzFeed News A sign at the Never Again Means #ShutDownICE in DC protest.

On Monday evening, the Jewish organizers and many of the protesters gathered in St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church in northern DC, where they trained for the next day’s demonstration, painted signs, and learned protest songs next to stained glass windows depicting Christian saints and beneath a hanging wooden crucifix. The local church is known for serving as a home base for progressive movements and for its association with the punk scene. “We are the voice within your heart / Plus 11 million / So listen, so listen,” one of the songs went, referring to the 11 million undocumented immigrants estimated to be living in the US. Emilia Feldman, 23, a Jewish Latina organizer with Movimiento Cosecha, spoke of how personal this movement feels; her grandparents were Holocaust survivors, and her friend, an asylum-seeker from Honduras, has been in a detention center for six months. “He has been denied his basic human rights in really horrible ways,” Feldman said, tears forming in her eyes. “I’ve gotten phone calls from him saying things like ‘I can’t do this anymore’ and ‘I want to sign papers for my own deportation,’ but he knows if he is deported back to Honduras, he will be killed.” Never Again Action and Movimiento Cosecha coordinated the DC protest, with Never Again Action’s main goal being to amplify Cosecha’s mission of securing permanent protection for all undocumented immigrants and ending deportation and detention. Cata Santiago, a 22-year-old Movimiento Cosecha organizer who is not Jewish, said she’s “really appreciative of the Jewish community who’s uplifting the voices of the undocumented immigrants.” “[They’re] also collaborating with Cosecha as a movement that’s on the front lines, and that in itself to me is powerful and deserving of respect,” said Santiago. In the late night hours of Monday, the protesters walked in the dark, carrying a 20-foot-long banner that read “PELOSI, NEVER AGAIN IS NOW #DIGNITYNOTDETENTION” through the streets of DC to a local organizer’s apartment. Along the way, several passersby asked what it meant. “Dignity, not detention!” one of the people carrying the banner yelled back. “See you on the Mall at noon?”

Leigh Vogel for BuzzFeed News Participants of the Never Again Means #ShutDownICE in DC protest stand face to face with police outside of ICE headquarters on July 16.

Early Tuesday morning, the organizers furiously typed away on laptops and took phone calls, arranging last-minute details for the action. Ben Doernberg didn’t go to sleep until 4:30 a.m. and woke up just three hours later. “I know that’s not good, and I think there can be glorification of that — but when you’re this close to getting something done, you do what you have to do,” he said.

In a Lyft ride to the National Mall, the organizers sang along to Panic! at the Disco’s “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” as Rubin offered everyone sunscreen. Protesters wearing yellow T-shirts that read “Never again, para nadie” slowly but surely gathered on the Mall. They eventually numbered over an estimated 1,000 people. All the planning had been a success. The leaders weren’t out here alone. Singing songs in Spanish, Hebrew, and English, they marched through the streets of the nation’s capital. Upon reaching ICE headquarters in southwest DC, the demonstrators formed human chains, blocking the building’s entrances, exits, and the surrounding streets. Eleven protesters entered the building and refused to leave, eventually being arrested for unlawful entry, police told BuzzFeed News. According to a leaked email written by the acting director of ICE, the building went into lockdown during the protest. “It’s not just symbolic — we’re actually shutting down ICE,” Rubin said. A few ICE employees who were returning from their lunch breaks were unable to get back in the building. At least one employee confronted a Latina protester, who said he had called her a “little bitch” due to her sign comparing ICE to Nazis. The older male employee, who declined to share his name with BuzzFeed News, wouldn’t confirm he’d said it but added that he “didn’t like her sign.” “I’m not a Nazi,” he said. “I’m a hardworking government employee.” Though mostly twentysomethings organized the action, the ages represented at the protest were incredibly varied. Parents marched hand in hand with their daughters. People in their sixties and seventies showed up in droves. Perhaps the youngest attendee was 4-month-old Norah, whose mother changed her diaper just feet from the ICE building. “We’re both descendants of refugees, and it’s important we stand with other refugees against hate and demonization,” said the 30-year-old mother, who asked to only be identified by her first name, Sarah. “We know what it feels like.” Rabbi Arthur Waskow, an 86-year-old who was once active in the civil rights movement and Vietnam War protests, stood with his back against the doors of ICE. Cane in hand, he wore a T-shirt that said “Resisting tyrants since Pharaoh.” “You can’t use a dictionary or an encyclopedia to understand the word ‘concentration camp,’” Waskow said in a speech to the protesters. “What you need is a calendar, because concentration camps over time turn into death camps if you don’t stop them.” With temperatures above 90 degrees and the DC humidity in full force, it was not an easy day for a protest. A team of organizers walked around doling out water bottles, Nature Valley bars, and sunscreen throughout the day. Organizer Yael Shafritz frequently reminded people to reapply sunscreen and stay hydrated — “because,” Shafritz said, “I’m a Jewish mother.”

Leigh Vogel for BuzzFeed News Rabbi Arthur Waskow makes an impromptu speech on the National Mall during the Never Again Means #ShutDownICE in DC protest.