On Sunday, June 30, 36 Jewish protesters were arrested after blocking the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in response to reports of the horrific conditions the children there are facing. The protesters — members of the Never Again Action group, a group of Jews that are working to “never let anything like the Holocaust ever happen again” — partnered with immigrant rights group Movimiento Cosecha to organize the protest.

On the Never Again Action Facebook page, the group wrote, “As Jews, we’ve been taught to never let anything like the Holocaust happen again. Now, with children detained in unacceptable conditions, ICE raids targeting our communities, and people dying at the border while seeking safety in the U.S., we are seeing the signs of a mass atrocity. We refuse to wait and see what happens next.”

According to Newsweek, protesters walked 1.6 miles to the Elizabeth Detention Center while holding signs, singing, and chanting in Hebrew and English, and blowing shofars (a ram’s horn that is used as a musical instrument in Jewish rituals) while calling for "closing the camps" and the abolition of ICE.

“I’m a Jewish Latina. The military camps where my people are being held today are concentration camps; just like the camps my people were held in 75 years ago were concentration camps,” said protester Tae Phoenix. “That’s why I’m here. That’s why we’re here.”

After Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) called out the detention centers by referring to them as “concentration camps,” Republican legislators criticized that classification while accusing her of demeaning the memories of Holocaust victims.

"Elected officials are spending more time arguing over the language used to describe these conditions than addressing the crisis itself," the group said in a press release before the protest. "They claim to speak for us Jews, but they don't. We refuse to allow politicians to use our trauma as a distraction from the mass atrocities being perpetrated by ICE and CBP at the border and across the country."