Never Again Action National Strategy
… and how we got there
This page, created in Fall 2025 by National Strategy Team and staff, is a brief overview of Never Again Action’s current strategy, including updates from previous strategic processes, adjustments for the current administration, examples of how those strategic orientations have and will continue to guide our work, and our plan for overhauling our movement’s approach to organizing in the current multifaceted crises.
Building on our Formal Strategy Process
Our most recent in-depth Strategic Process included many interviews with partners, consultation with chapters and leaders (including the National Strategy Team), and ratification by the full membership. This strategic guidance, which was finalized in 2024, shifted Never Again Action’s direction and capacity to fighting local battles in deep relationship with partners, and reaffirmed the need for cultural and political education through trainings and a clear metanarrative. We also began a process to develop an organizational stance and member guidance when relating to Palestine-Israel. This will include adoption of an organizational statement and a chapter toolkit. Please see more in the “Our Palestine-Israel Process” note on our website.
Entering a new era: How Trump 2.0 shifted our strategy
Adapting to the rapid fascist consolidation of the Trump administration, a number of important adjustments have been made while maintaining the overall strategic orientations from the 2024 Strategy, including:
Pods: In addition to official NAA chapters, we provided a toolkit, onboarding process, and connections for non-chapter area members to start local organizing units (pods)- building our base’s leadership to direct the increased energy of the moment toward immigrant-led crisis response and antifascist organizing.
Metanarrative update: The NAA Content Team updated the metanarrative, our evidence-based and overarching message, so that it now addresses the current moment, adding greater emphasis on the misuse of Jewish safety, as the threat of Project Esther grew, and to lean more deeply into our understanding of fascism.
Rapid response: As rapid response needs started emerging every day, we created a system of parameters and guidance for responding to the influx of urgent mobilization moments. This process was ratified by the National Strategy Team.
In 2026, we will take a step back and look at how Never Again Action can best contribute to the movement in the coming years through the Derekh Tzedek (Path of Justice) process, assessing major strategic shifts needed to meet this new phase of immigrant terror in the U.S. where we can fulfill our role of mobilizing allies to be part of a mutli-racial, multi-status, multi-class coalition to end detention and deportation.
Graphic of 5 overlapping circles around a central circle that reads “Strategic Orientations” Each circle contains one of the following Orientations listed below.
What does that mean for our strategic orientations as we head into 2026?
Meeting the moment: moving from 2025 to 2026
Strategic Orientation A: Build relationships of Solidarity
Never Again Action’s standing as the only national organization whose sole purpose is to mobilize allies into the immigrant rights movement requires us to base our organizing in relationships with directly impacted people and communities. These relationships help us move with empathy, understanding, shared interest, and the ability to take swift leadership at a moment’s notice.
Accomplishments and wins in 2025
In summer 2025, we sprung into action when our friend Cata “Xóchitl” Santiago, an DACA-recipient and community organizer who was instrumental in the formation of NAA, was arrested by ICE in a bald attempt at retaliation for her unrelenting advocacy. Members of Never Again Action sprung into action; we got the word out on social media, organized vigils, sing-alongs, letter-writing parties and a phone zap bringing dozens together to flood ICE’s phones and demand her release.The fast and disperse mobilization was only possible because Never Again Action offered material support, such as coaching, reimbursement for costs, a toolkit for creating local events and communications coordination, making possible 11 different actions across Turtle Island. We are thrilled to report that Xóchitl was released from ICE detention in October, proving the power of sustained solidarity and resistance.
All of our chapters have a primary focus of adding capacity for local immigrant-led partners:
NAA Boston has connected with immigrant-led organizations all over Massachusetts in the past year, building solidarity and learning the best ways to support their communities.
NAA Austin has started to play a critical role in a local coalition to fight against License Plate Readers in Austin, including planning a political education teach-in when partners needed the additional capacity to do so.
Before Broadview Detention Center in Chicago became a national focal point, NAA Chicago held a Tisha b’Av protest and prayer at the detention center in August 2025 in coalition with Jewish left partners– connecting Jewish ritual to our own history of suffering under oppression and exile, holding space for the people detained there and thus recommitting themselves to solidarity through neighborhood ICE watch programs, congregational organizing and frontline direct action.
Looking forward to 2026
As we head into 2026, NAA continues to lean into deepening relationships of solidarity with local immigrant-led partnerships and national coalition work with Detention Watch Network, New Way Forward, and the many members who help guide our path through personal experience within the immigration system. Our chapters will focus on adding capacity to immigrant-led orgs and respond to asks as possible. National and local partners will be included in our strategy-building Derekh Tzedek Process.
Strategic orientation B: Use our privilege to throw sand in the gears
We are dedicated to using any whiteness/citizenship privilege that we may have to disrupt the detention and deportation machine. This could look like refusing compliance with undemocratic policies, taking risks or leveraging political influence. We have a special responsibility to be a vocal and visible opposition, especially when immigrants are facing increasingly dire consequences just for existing in this country.
Accomplishments and wins in 2025
In 2025, in New York, the co-held Never Again Action and Jews for Racial & Economic Justice working group have organized court watches, turning out hundreds of less-directly impacted people to (sometimes successfully) pressure ICE and the criminal legal system to let the people they’ve targeted return to their communities.
The NAA DC chapter strategized with LaColectiVA to confront local public officials, eventually winning a years-long campaign for a county-wide Trust Policy against police-ICE collaboration, providing substantial protection for immigrant communities. Demonstrating that non-immigrant community members have a shared interest in these issues creates the political pressure on power-holders.
Members and chapters across the country have shown up for rapid response actions in defense of particular community members, often providing safety in that moment. Our phone zap in support of Xóchitl Santiago clogged up the lines of the ICE Field Office for an afternoon.
Looking forward to 2026
In 2026, NAA will especially prioritize tactics that effectively mobilize the privilege of white U.S. citizens less directly impacted by immigration and state repression, including but not limited to frontline resistance, ICE interventions, organizing Jewish communities and pressuring power-holders.
Strategic orientation C: Organize allies to build power for immigrant rights
Across the country, people are ready to pour their energy into supporting immigrants and resisting fascism, but many who are not directly impacted by immigration don’t know how to start. NAA has prioritized sharing information and resources to guide these new and old allies into meaningful contributions to the immigrant rights movement.
Accomplishments and wins in 2025
In 2025, our weekly newsletter brings thousands of subscribers news about current events and informs them of material steps to resist the deportation machine. We share updates weekly about training events, protests, and action items like phone zaps and petitions at both the local and national level, getting information exactly where – and to whom – it needs to go. We deliberately shaped our storytelling through the ratified Metanarrative to provide consistent rhetorical framework in all our e-mails and social media, contextualizing local issues in line with our history and values.
Looking forward to 2026
As we head into 2026, NAA’s Membership Program will continue to orient and direct members around the country to plug into volunteer roles, their local chapter or National Teams. All new members are welcomed with a one-on-one call to help them find their role in the movement. Our current strategy includes developing leaders to support Accessibility and Inclusion, digital security and website upgrades, fundraising, political education and more, providing opportunities to become invaluable to the movement regardless of where you live or what skills you have.
Strategic orientation D: Disrupt narratives that weaponize Jewish trauma
Never Again Action wholly rejects the idea that activists or anyone deserve to be targeted, arrested, and/or deported by law enforcement, including ICE, in order to assure the safety of the Jewish community.
Accomplishments and wins in 2025
Earlier in 2025, when the idea of Jewish safety was abused to target pro-Palestine immigrant student organizers, we distributed an ICE Non-Compliance Pledge, which both creatively educated about and created a promise of solidarity from 850 academic community members.
As weaponization of Jewish safety against pro-Palestine students was being headlined daily in the spring of 2025, NAA partnered with IfNotNow to educate on how Islamophobia helped build and continues to embolden DHS and ICE since their inception to enforce anti-Palestine policy being used to crack down on organizers who have immigrated to the US now.
NAA’s Texas chapter hosted a seder in Shelby Park, a public park which had been closed off to the community by ICE. Holding the religious ceremony of a Passover Seder allowed them to get around the restrictions placed on gatherings at the park, allowing a concurrent protest to take place at the same time, demonstrating how our beautiful traditions and heritage can, instead of being misused for harm, actually create mutual care and community.
On a national level, Never Again Action partnered with various Jewish organizations to lead a dozen protests and vigils across the country (from Florida to California to Minnesota to Arkansas) during the Jewish observance of Tisha B’Av, offering comms & financial material support and a toolkit for organizers to demonstrate public Jewish insistence on sanctuary for all.
Looking forward to 2026
As we head into 2026, NAA will prioritize messaging and rapid response opportunities which intervene in narratives that harm immigrants by weaponizing Jewish safety or trauma.
Strategic Orientation E: Train ourselves and our base
Meeting a moment like this requires us to learn from each other, as well as from activists who have successfully resisted fascism in the past.
Accomplishments and wins in 2025
National trainings:
In April 2025, Never Again Action and IfNotNow offered a national ICE Watch training, with over 800 participants learning political ed, ICE Watch basics, and Know Your Rights info from NAA members in New York City and Chicago.
In January, NAA held a national “skillshare”, which trained people on using somatics to keep themselves emotionally and physically grounded in the traumatic aftermath of Trump’s second election.
A Social Media Anti-Surveillance skillshare training was presented in November 2025 by a member who is bottom-lining NAA’s organizational digital security upgrade process.
Local trainings:
Our Boston chapter completed a six month long training program designed to teach them the history and present-day issues of immigrant justice and give them the skills they – as allies – need to support and connect with local immigrant-led organizations.
In Austin, the Never Again chapter has held various trainings educating Jewish communities in and outside of synagogue walls and the broader community on the dangers and violence of border militarization and on the danger of surveillance via license plate readers.
NAA Wisconsin hosted a Power Mapping training in February and has been recruiting allies into Accompaniment and Community Defense trainings.
Looking forward to 2026
We plan to offer several trainings in the coming year and encourage members to tell us what they’d like to learn or teach others.
We are overhauling the NAA Member Resource Hub, which stores resources, trainings, and other documents designed to strengthen autonomous member organizing and education. This member-led update will increase accessibility and usability of the site, provide additional security for internal documents while retaining public access to external resources, and allow members to easily make contributions and edits. We expect to launch the new Resource Hub in early 2026.
Where are we going from here? Derekh Tzedek Process
We recognize that the urgency of this moment demands more from us. We know that because the horrors perpetrated by our government in our name as citizens and with our tax payer dollars continue to escalate.
In 2026, we will zoom out and redefine where we are going through the end of 2028. We’re calling it the Derekh Tzedek process, which translates to Path of Justice. This process will help us take stock of where we are as a movement in this moment and where we need to be headed. It will help us gain clarity on what we can do to meet the moment.
Much more coming soon.