Washington (CNN) Washington, DC, restaurants and schools were prepared for a "Day Without Immigrants" protest Thursday, but so far, policymakers who live in the nation's capital haven't taken much notice. 
 
 They might around lunchtime, however. The Architect of the Capitol, which manages much of the support staff on the Hill and contracts with food services said Thursday there would be a modified schedule, and three dining options on the Hill were closed due to the demonstration. 
 
 Immigrants and supporters were planning to strike Thursday in a protest loosely organized by social media and word of mouth. The goal is to demonstrate the importance of immigrants to society, as the Trump administration continues to pursue hard-line enforcement policies that advocates fear will disrupt communities and the economy. 
 
 Restaurants in the DC area were planning to operate with short staff, offer menus in solidarity with striking immigrants and in some cases, close altogether. The actions are taking place around the country. 
 
 Celebrity chef José Andrés, who is locked in a lawsuit with President Donald Trump for pulling his restaurant from the Trump hotel project in Washington over Trump's anti-undocumented immigrant rhetoric, announced he would close most of his restaurants Thursday as part of the protest. 
 
 The Trump International Hotel did not respond to a request for comment on its plans for Thursday. 
 
 Schools were preparing as well. A bilingual charter school in Northwest DC planned to close, and DC public schools were preparing for possible walkouts. 
 
 Similar actions have taken place in other cities. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was the site of a similar protest this week, and bodegas in New York closed earlier this month in protest of Trump's travel ban executive order. 
 
 Thursday's planned protest is the first such event in the nation's capital, but so far it has failed to catch the eye of the lawmakers who create the policies that the protests will target. 
 
 Outreach to many of the offices on Capitol Hill that are the most involved in immigration policy turned up little awareness of the planned protest, aside from a few word-of-mouth exchanges. 
 
 The office of the Architect of the Capitol, which oversees and contracts with thousands of Capitol support staff, did not respond to an inquiry about whether any preparations were underway or absences were anticipated. 
 
 Restaurants to close 
 
 The impact may be felt, nevertheless, if policymakers try to eat at hot spots around town on Thursday. 
 
 Andrés announced his restaurants Jaleo, Zaytinya and Oyamel Cocina Mexicana would be closed, while China Chilcano would remain open for company staff to work. 
 
 "In support of our people & #ADayWithoutImmigrants Thurs 2/16 we will not open @jaleo DC CC MD, @zaytinya or @oyameldc #ImmigrantsFeedAmerica," he tweeted. 
 
 Sweetgreen, a chain of salad restaurants, said it would close all of its DC locations in solidarity with its team members and Day Without Immigrants. In response to tweets , the chain said workers can use paid "impact hours" and still receive pay for Thursday. 
 
 Andy Shallal, the founder of Busboys and Poets, a small local chain of bookstores and cafes, said his business would be closed "in solidarity w/ my brothers & sisters." 
 
 As an #immigrant I am proud to stand in solidarity w/ my brothers & sisters All @busboysandpoets will b closed Thurs #ADayWithoutImmigrants — Andy Shallal (@andyshallal) February 15, 2017 
 
 Bar Pilar said it was planning to open with a skeleton crew, and serve Latin American-inspired dishes in solidarity with staff and immigrants. A spokeswoman said some staff have pledged their tips to coworkers participating in the protest, and some proceeds from cocktail sales will be donated to the American Immigration Council. 
 
 John Andrade's restaurants, including Meridian Pint, Smoke and Barrel, Brookland Pint and Rosario, will be open, but "bring your own food" with the kitchens closed, Andrade said in a statement on Facebook. 
 
 "As a Latino business owner, I stand in solidarity with all of my immigrant staff," he said. 
 
 Black Restaurant Group, Shouk and Taylor Gourmet all told CNN they would see how short-staffed they are on Thursday, but said they support their worker's decisions to protest if they so choose. 
 
 Clyde's Restaurant Group, which operates the popular White House-adjacent institution Old Ebbitt Grill, said its properties would remain open but could be affected by the demonstration. 
 
 "It is going to be a difficult day for us," the company's president, Tom Meyer, said. "Immigrants are an integral part of our team; there is no doubt we will struggle. We have always loved, supported and cared for our employees, and tomorrow will be no different. We support their decision to stay home." 
 
 DC fitness chain VIDA sent an email saying it would also be affected. 
 
 "Immigrant workers make up an indispensable part of our VIDA community and the backbone of many of our daily operations," the email said. "We support our employees participation in the nationwide Day Without Immigrants movement tomorrow and as a result we have modified our operations wherever necessary." 
 
 Schools prepare 
 
 Schools were also preparing. Latin American Montessori Bilingual Public Charter School in Northwest DC will be closed Thursday for students and teachers participating in the protest, the school confirmed. 
 
 DC Public Schools Chief John Davis emailed principals expressing respect for protests but insisting teachers and students were expected to be in class. 
 
 "DCPS schools are and will continue to be safe places for all students and all people in our communities, regardless of immigration status, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression," Davis wrote. "While some may plan to attend this week's walkout about immigration, all students and staff are expected to be in school throughout the day so that teaching and learning can continue. We highly value and are committed to fostering a learning environment where staff and students feel safe and secure and we respect the right to self-expression and peaceful protest." ||||| FILE - In a Monday, Feb. 6, 2017 file photo, family members who have just arrived from Syria embrace and are greeted by family who live in the United States upon their arrival at John F. Kennedy International... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In a Monday, Feb. 6, 2017 file photo, family members who have just arrived from Syria embrace and are greeted by family who live in the United States upon their arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. Organizers in cities across the U.S. are telling immigrants to miss class,... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In a Monday, Feb. 6, 2017 file photo, family members who have just arrived from Syria embrace and are greeted by family who live in the United States upon their arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. Organizers in cities across the U.S. are telling immigrants to miss class,... (Associated Press) FILE - In a Monday, Feb. 6, 2017 file photo, family members who have just arrived from Syria embrace and are greeted by family who live in the United States upon their arrival at John F. Kennedy International... (Associated Press) 
 
 PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Organizers in cities across the U.S. are telling immigrants to miss class, miss work and not shop on Thursday as a way to show the country how important they are to America's economy and way of life. 
 
 "A Day Without Immigrants" actions are planned in cities including Philadelphia, Washington, Boston and Austin, Texas. 
 
 The protest comes in response to President Donald Trump and his 1-month-old administration. The Republican president has pledged to increase deportation of immigrants living in the country illegally, build a wall along the Mexican border, and ban people from certain majority-Muslim countries from coming into the U.S. He also has blamed high unemployment on immigration. 
 
 Employers and institutions in some cities were already expressing solidarity Wednesday with immigrant workers. Washington restaurateur John Andrade said he would close his businesses Thursday, and David Suro, owner of Tequilas Restaurant in Philadelphia and a Mexican immigrant, said he also planned to participate. 
 
 The Davis Museum at Wellesley College in Massachusetts said it would remove or shroud all artwork created or given by immigrants to the museum through Feb. 21. 
 
 In New Mexico, the state with the largest percentage of Hispanic residents in the nation, school officials worried that hundreds of students may stay home on Thursday. 
 
 "We respectfully ask all parents to acknowledge that students need to be in class every day to benefit from the education they are guaranteed and to avoid falling behind in school and life," principals with the Albuquerque Public Schools wrote in a letter to parents. 
 
 Students who take part in the protest will receive an unexcused absence, Albuquerque school officials said. 
 
 Organizers in Philadelphia said they expect hundreds of workers and families to participate. 
 
 "Our goal is to highlight the need for Philadelphia to expand policies that stop criminalizing communities of color," said Erika Almiron, executive director of Juntos, a nonprofit group that works with the Latino immigrant community. "What would happen if massive raids did happen? What would the city look like?" 
 
 Almiron said that while community groups have not seen an uptick in immigration raids in the city, residents are concerned about the possibility. 
 
 Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney is among leaders in several cities nationwide who have vowed to maintain their "sanctuary city" status and decline to help federal law enforcement with deportation efforts. 
 
 Many people who make the choice to skip work Thursday will not be paid in their absence, but social media posts encouraging participation stressed that the cause is worth the sacrifice. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writers Collin Binkley in Boston and Russell Contreras in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed to this report. 
 
 Errin Haines Whack covers urban affairs for The Associated Press. 
 
 ___ 
 
 This story has been corrected to show that the day of a possible student protest in New Mexico is Thursday, not Wednesday. ||||| Notice 
 
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 Chef José Andrés, an immigrant from Spain, will be closing many of his Washington-region restaurants Thursday as part of a nationwide immigrant boycott. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP) 
 
 (UPDATE: Restaurants, schools close in ‘Day Without Immigrants’ protest) 
 
 Colin McDonough will be working in the kitchen at the restaurant he owns on Thursday while nearly his entire kitchen staff is out for the day. McDonough said that to keep his restaurant open, he and a co-owner will flip burgers and make chicken wings themselves, sticking to the basic menu items they feel confident preparing. 
 
 Most of the kitchen staff at McDonough’s Boundary Stone restaurant in D.C.’s Bloomingdale neighborhood is made up of immigrants who will be on strike Thursday as part of the national “Day Without Immigrants” protest. 
 
 “It will be a very limited menu because we are not as talented as the people who normally work there,” said McDonough, who will be paying the employees who participate in the boycott. “We just got together and decided together as a team that it was a good idea on our part to give our team off to voice their concerns.” 
 
 [These Washington restaurants will close for the ‘Day Without Immigrants’ protest] 
 
 Immigrants in D.C. and across the country plan to participate in the “Day Without Immigrants” boycott, a response to President Trump’s pledges to crack down on those in the country illegally, use “extreme vetting” and build a wall along the Mexican border. The social-media-organized protest aims to show the president the effect immigrants have in the country on a daily basis. The boycott calls for immigrants not to attend work, open their businesses, spend money or even send their children to school. The Washington region had the seventh-largest immigrant population in the country in 2010, with 21.8 percent of the population being foreign-born, according to a study from the Brookings Institution. 
 
 President-elect Donald Trump pledged to end "sanctuary cities" while campaigning for the White House. Washington, D.C., is one such city. Here's what that means and how D.C. is trying to fight Trump's stance. (Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post) 
 
 At least one D.C. charter school, LAMB Public Charter School, will be closed Thursday because staff members and students will be protesting. Some day cares will close or reduce their hours because employees are striking. Jubilee JumpStart day care in Adams Morgan is opening a half hour later in the morning and closing an hour earlier because about 50 percent of its classroom staff will be boycotting. 
 
 Dee Dee Parker Wright, executive director of Jubilee JumpStart, says that these are full-time staff members who have paid time off, so will still be paid on Thursday. She will be giving her part-time staffers, many of whom are also immigrants and do not get paid time off, more hours to fill-in for those striking. 
 
 “We don’t really have much of a choice because our folks have paid leave and we honor that,” Wright said. “Part of our mission is that we are community-based, and we know that our staff comes from the community and we try to support everybody in what’s fair and right.” 
 
 The chief of schools for D.C. Public Schools, John Davis, sent a note to principals in the school system saying that while many people may participate in the boycott, school will continue as normal and staff and students are expected to be in attendance. 
 
 “We highly value and are committed to fostering a learning environment where staff and students feel safe and secure and we respect the right to self-expression and peaceful protest,” the letter says. 
 
 Celebrity chef José Andrés, an immigrant from Spain, announced on Twitter that he will be closing some of his restaurants in the region because of the boycott — three Jaleo restaurants, Zaytinya and Oyamel. Andrés backed out of a contract in 2015 with Trump to open a restaurant inside D.C.’s Trump International Hotel after the then-presidential candidate called undocumented Mexican immigrants “criminals” and “rapists.” The two are still in the middle of a legal battle. 
 
 [José Andrés suggests he and Trump end lawsuits by donating to a veterans’ group] 
 
 Busboys and Poets owner Andy Shallal, an Iraqi immigrant and progressive activist, will also shut all six of the restaurants throughout the region. He said the closures will be a “huge financial hit,” but added that “it’s an important” stance to take. All of his full-time and part-time employees have paid time off, and Shallal said they will be using that paid time on Thursday and have been supportive of his decision to close the restaurants. 
 
 “I realized I’m an immigrant too, and it is important for me to take that stand,” Shallal said. “I am in a position of power, and I realize that, and I am able to do this and I can be in solidarity with my staff.” 
 
 John Andrade, the principal owner of Meridian Pint in Columbia Heights, announced on Facebook that he would be closing the kitchen of his restaurant Thursday, though the bar will remain open and customers can bring in their own food. The kitchen at Brookland Pint, which Andrade also owns, will be closed. 
 
 “As a Latino business owner I stand in solidarity with all of my immigrant staff,” he wrote. “Therefore, we will close our kitchen this Thursday in support of our immigrant staff’s desire and right to protest the evolving state of immigration policies in our country.” 
 
 The popular Washington fast casual chain Cava Grill says it supports its workers right to protest and have worked with them to schedule time off. The chain will remain open, and has support staff ready to fill in when necessary as a “show of support for our frontline team members.” 
 
 Virtually the entire kitchen staff at El Chucho Mexican restaurant in Columbia Heights will be off. 
 
 Many other restaurants throughout the region will close Thursday. Those that remain open say they may not offer full menus because their suppliers could be affected by the boycott and they might not have a full kitchen staff. 
 
 Read more: 
 
 Students, unable to return home, face uncertain status in America 
 
 More than 10,000 Women’s March and inauguration attendees donated their Metro cards 
 
 How protesters plan to get under Trump’s skin wherever he goes ||||| Milwaukee’s immigrant-owned shops and businesses shuttered by the dozens this week. Thousands then took to the streets of Wisconsin’s capital, most of them foreign-born. They were line cooks and construction workers, store clerks and students. They had skipped work or cut class to protest recent crackdowns on immigration under President Donald Trump—and to show how critical immigrants are to the U.S. economy. 
 
 “We’re looking for freedom. We’re looking for a better life for our families,” Azarel Arias, a 39-year-old foundry worker and one of the demonstrators, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “We have to show solidarity.” 
 
 Immigrants from around the country will do just that on Thursday. Businesses and workers nationwide are planning to strike as part of a grassroots campaign that’s spread like wildfire if under the radar. Billed in Spanish as “Un Día Sin Inmigrante,” or “A Day Without Immigrants,” the boycott urges both legal and undocumented residents alike not to attend work, spend money, open their businesses, or send their children to school. 
 
 News of Thursday's nationwide boycott has largely spread among immigrant communities through word of mouth and on social media. 
 
 “There’s a lot of people who don’t recognize what we do for this country,” said Adan Rodriguez, 26, who is organizing friends and neighbors in Chicago. Born in Mexico, Rodriguez said he came to the U.S. legally in 2003. He completed an associate degree at St. Augustine College last year while working full-time as a landscaper in the city’s affluent northern suburbs. 
 
 Speaking to Vocativ on Wednesday, Rodriguez focused on immigrant workers who are integral to the U.S. workforce. “Who built your house or picked that fruit in the supermarket? Who cooked the food in your favorite restaurant?” he said. “This is about giving people who are in the shadows of the system a voice.” 
 
 Like many of the foreign-born men and women who labor in low-wage professions, planning for the protests has occurred largely outside the view of the mainstream public. It hasn’t attracted the deluge of press coverage that preceded the Women’s March last month. Nor was the campaign hatched by the types of activists and professional advocacy groups that helped organized Monday’s protest in Wisconsin. 
 
 Instead, the campaign’s spread through word of mouth and on social media. Family members have swapped text messages as co-workers conversed. Fliers passed hands and circulated online. And there’s been no shortage of people promoting “Un Día Sin Inmigrantes” on Facebook. 
 
 Rodriguez said he first heard whispers of Thursday’s demonstrations from a cousin living in Portland, Oregon. Intrigued, he published a three-minute video online last week that called on people to join. It exploded. Nearly 5 million have watched Rodriguez’ video since a group that advocates for immigration reform shared a version of it on Facebook. It’s been shared more than 180,000 times. 
 
 Images and video from Milwaukee’s demonstration, which attracted an estimated 20,000 people, has also helped build more momentum and excitement in recent days among immigrant communities. Local Spanish-language radio stations have started to list the names of area businesses that are planning to participate. 
 
 “I want the Latinos to feel empowered,” said Maria Castillo, who is spearheading the boycotts planned in Wilmington, North Carolina. “We are here for a reason. We help the United States in a major way.” 
 
 At least a dozen popular restaurants in Washington, D.C., including those of famed chef José Andrés, have now announced that they will close in solidarity of their largely-immigrant workforce. Eateries in Austin, Philadelphia, and St. Paul, Minnesota, plan to follow suit. In Chicago, nearly 500 people have already RSVP’d to attend a rally at Union Park on the city’s west side. 
 
 "We believe that real changes happen when the community unites in the same voice," reads and announcement from Latino-owned J&K Tire and Auto Service in Memphis, Tennessee, which will close on Thursday. "It is time to support us and say how important our contribution to this society is." J&K Tire and Auto Service 
 
 Boycotts and demonstrations are also expected to take place beyond large liberal enclaves and places traditionally known for active immigrant communities. At least 70 Latino-owned business in Des Moines, Iowa, have pledged to close for the day, including restaurants, salons, and ice cream shops, organizers said. Columbus, Ohio, could see supermarkets and construction companies shut down. And an auto repair shop in Memphis, Tennessee has already started to inform clients that it won’t be open on Thursday. 
 
 “We believe that real changes happen when the community unites in the same voice,” the announcement at J&K Tire and Auto Service reads. “It is time to support us and say how important our contribution to this society is.”
– While it may not draw in the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Henry Kissinger, or Melania Trump, activists have declared Thursday to be a "Day Without Immigrants" and are urging immigrants, whether they're in the US legally or not, to strike. The grassroots campaign is calling for immigrants to demonstrate how much they contribute to the US by not working, opening their businesses, sending their kids to school, or buying anything for a day, CNN reports. It's not clear how many people plan to take part, though word of the protest has been spreading quickly on social media, with this Spanish-language Facebook video for "Un Dia Sin Inmigrantes" viewed more than 5 million times. In other coverage: Actions are planned in cities including Philadelphia, Washington, and Boston, the AP reports. In a show of solidarity, the Davis Museum at Wellesley College in Massachusetts says it will remove or cover all artwork created or donated by immigrants. Many Washington, DC-area restaurants will be closed or open with only a handful of staff members. Iraq-born Busboys and Poets owner Andy Shallal tells the Washington Post that all six of his area restaurants will be closed, with staff getting a paid day off. "I realized I'm an immigrant, too, and it is important for me to take that stand," he says. "Our goal is to highlight the need for Philadelphia to expand policies that stop criminalizing communities of color," Erika Almiron, executive director of the nonprofit group Juntos, tells the AP. "What would happen if massive raids did happen? What would the city look like?" Vocativ looks at the origins of the day of protest and notes that it has spread far beyond "large liberal enclaves and places traditionally known for active immigrant communities," with at least 70 Latino-owned businesses in Des Moines, Iowa, expected to close. DNAinfo reports that Rick Bayless is among many celebrity chefs joining the protest in solidarity with restaurant workers. He plans to close four Chicago restaurants Thursday and donate part of the takings from another two to an immigrant rights group.