GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — One hundred women, including a West Michigan woman, will walk 100 miles starting this week to greet Pope Francis during his visit to Washington D.C. to draw attention to the plight of immigrants.
Cyndi Hicks lives in Grand Rapids and is the only woman taking on the journey from Michigan. Hicks and 99 other women who belong to various immigration reform activism groups will start the Women’s Pilgrimage for Migrant Justice walk on Tuesday
“I can get healthy, get in shape, walk 100 miles, welcome the pope and bond with other women that feel strongly about the same topics as I do, that want to fight for justice,” Hicks said.
The women will begin their trek at the York Detention Center in Pennsylvania and will walk 10 to 15 miles each day until they arrive in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 22, a day before Pope Francis’ meeting with White House officials.
Hicks said the purpose of the journey is to bring more attention to immigration reform and migrant justice.
“We are women that are speaking up about what happens when legislation can’t get passed,” she explained. “This is all centered around how it affects women. When your primary caregiver is taken out of the home, you are left without any means of getting child support and you are paying all the rent or health payment by yourself.”
For Hicks, the topics hit home.
“I have a mixed status family and that just means part of my family has status to be here legally and the other part doesn’t,” she said. “And it’s not about just my family because I’ve been on this journey a really long time, but it’s about 11 million families.”
Hicks said she worries about her family being separated.
“From the bottom of my heart, I worry so much about my own family being together. Many of the women that I’m walking with have already endured having their spouses taken away. Many of the spouses were held in that Yorktown Detention Center and deported and now they’ll never be with their spouses again,” Hicks told 24 Hour News 8.
Hicks, a real estate agent, also works with a lot of clients who are immigrants and said she is walking for them, too.
“They come to West Michigan to settle here and I want them to feel welcomed. I’m taking to the streets, literally, with a message that we need to have more compassion and more humanity towards looking at a family unit as that’s the foundation of what any country should be built on,” Hicks said.
Hicks said she was also moved to participate in the walk after some of thestatements made by Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump.
“Donald Trump talking about removing 11 million people out of our society along with other families and children, that’s like 11 million without papers to be in the country, but what happens to their kids and their wives and their families and their homes and their businesses and all the jobs that they created,” Hicks said.
Pope Francis will arrive in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 22 and then travel to New York City and Philadelphia.
