By Dr. Dora Muhammad
1Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
Revelation 22:1-2
After spearheading four months of collective discernment with the congregation of Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., my co-lead and I established the Immigration Ministry in June last year while celebrating National Caribbean American Heritage Month. Marking our one-year anniversary with our ministry’s first Annual Day on Sunday, June 7 was momentous. The formal ministry has become part of the historic work of liberation in the life of the Metropolitan and the AME denomination.
I cherish the memories of my conversations with the late Bishop Reginald Jackson, in his role as chair of the AME Social Action Commission, and his decision to elevate immigration justice to the national agenda of the Commission. Bishop Francine Brookins continues this elevation in her inspirational leadership of the Commission.
In 2025, Bishop Jackson convened the “Somebody Ought to Say Something Press Conference” in Metropolitan’s sanctuary to issue a call to action in response to presidential executive orders. During her remarks, Atty. Sherrilyn Ifill pointed to the need to respond to government actions against immigrants. Noting the AME Connectional structure and members in the Caribbean and Africa, she asked, “Or do we think that has nothing to do with us?”
Metropolitan boldly answered. Our immigration ministry focuses on interventions through faith-rooted advocacy, grassroots activation, and rapid-response participation; the embodiment of welcome and creative education and awareness; and revisioning and building new systems of support and resilience. Every act of ministry—a blooming fruit on branches of love in the sacred tree of life extending across borders.
As a daughter of Caribbean immigrants, I see this ministry grow organically from my heart. In the face of detractors, saboteurs, naysayers, mischief-makers, disbelievers who claim that immigration is a black issue, and gatekeeping bars constructed by haughty spirits, our ministry flows with spiritual defiance and depth, like a river of the water of life in the middle of the streets of our communities. Like the miraculous rivers of Windward Island folklore of the revolutionary and healer Queen Nanny of the Maroons, who escaped a plantation and established the first community of Jamaican freedom fighters along a 900-foot precipice in the mountains.
From legacies of medicine women like Queen Nanny, in the face of colonizers who dehumanize and demonize, we continue to clear the bush of the pathogens of white supremacy and systemic greed, the exploitation of the vulnerable, and the weaponization of faith. We have always been humble, passionate vanguards of justice and equity, from the hush harbors of our ancestors to our sanctuaries today. Burning sage. Finding sage. Being sage. Breathing sage. Each of us—a leaf of healing.
Dora is the principal of Creative Grace, LLC, and founder of The AWARE Project (Advocacy for Women’s Activism, Rights & Empowerment). She is the Ambassador to Women for the Institute of Caribbean Studies and a consultant at Theologies of CARE at Faith in Public Life.
