PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY, Virginia, July 29—Thousands of immigrant workers and their supporters voted at three separate meetings here this week to boycott non-Latino-owned businesses August 27-September 3. The boycott is part of ongoing protests against a July 10 county resolution deputizing local cops as immigration agents.

The meeting pictured above was held in the town of Woodbridge. A similar meeting in Manassas had to be moved outside to accommodate a crowd of over 1,000.

Immigration “will never stop,” said Roberto Bautista, a machine maintenance worker originally from Honduras, in a July 15 interview. They are just trying to scare people.”

One of his neighbors, who is U.S.-born, said he supports the measure because his wife was injured in a hit-and-run accident with “an illegal.”

The resolution also asks county staff to study which government services can be denied undocumented workers under state and federal law. Supervisors in neighboring Loudon County passed a similar measure July 17. “Traditional thinking is that if you are born in America you are entitled to education…. We’ve got to rethink that,” Eugene Delgaudio, the measure’s sponsor, told WTOP News.

Workers at the Prince William County meetings proposed caravanning to Loudon County in a show of support. Wilbert Chavez, 32, a carpeting worker originally from El Salvador who has lived in the United States for 13 years, said he is looking forward to the protests. “I only came here to work,” he said.

—SETH DELLINGER