Black faith leaders came together Thursday, Nov. 13, to send a message to Attorney General Todd Rokita: “Keep your hands off our kids.”
The message comes as a response to the attorney general’s recent action suing IPS for the district’s failure nearly a year ago to release a student to immigration officials.
The faith leaders made clear their support for IPS. They called the lawsuit political theater and questioned the attorney general’s use of tax dollars in pursuing the case.
Josh Riddick with the Black Church Coalition helped organize the group standing with IPS. He’s also the father of an IPS student and spoke about his fears as a parent.
“I dread a future where I have to calm my child down and try to make sense of why their friends were taken by masked men and disappeared,” Riddick said. “Instead, I want a future where every child can thrive in our schools, every child gets the resources they need to be successful, and their hunger to learn can be fed by a school who is not distracted by frivolous, partisan lawsuits.”
Faith leaders said the gathering, which included representatives from the Baptist Ministers Alliance, Capitol City Baptist Fellowship, Concerned Clergy, and Statewide Missionary Baptists, was necessary to show a united front.
Five IPS commissioners and several top administrators, including Superintendent Aleesia Johnson, also attended and joined the faith leaders in prayer.
The lawsuit comes alongside growing fears among educators nationally that their schools could become caught in the crosshairs of hostility toward immigrants and the Trump administration’s mass deportation strategy.
Darrell Brooks, pastor at New Liberty Missionary Baptist Church on the far east side, said it was important for all schools in Indianapolis to stand together.
“If we do not hold the line here, IPS will not be the last district that is under attack,” he said. “This united front is what you get when you mess with our kids.”
Why is Attorney General Todd Rokita suing IPS?
The lawsuit takes issue with a nearly nine-year-old IPS directive to employees not to assist immigration officials unless legally required to do so. It references an event that happened nearly a year ago.
Rokita wrote in recent legal filings, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers contacted IPS in January to seek a student’s dismissal from school after their parent voluntarily agreed to return to his home country.
After IPS refused to release the student without being presented a court order, the attorney general said, the parent missed a planned flight out of the country. In February, Rokita sent a letter to IPS, outlining concerns about district directives.
IPS officials said in a recent statement they had been collaborating with the attorney general’s office to review relevant district policies, but the state official provided little time to respond to his office’s findings.
The attorney general previously disagreed with IPS’ retelling of events, saying in a social media post his office granted multiple extensions after the delivery of its initial letter.
The lawsuit does not name the parent nor the student, and IPS has not filed a legal response yet. But, during a recent community meeting, IPS Board President Angelia Moore alluded to safety concerns related to releasing a student to an unknown person.
“You cannot walk into a school without identification and take a child,” Moore said during the meeting. “So, until we can address the bigger issue of keeping our children safe, we will continue to fight this.”
In a statement to Mirror Indy after the Black Church Coalition’s press conference, a spokesperson for Rokita shifted blame onto educators and accused the district of keeping migrant students in classrooms for financial gain.
“This action is about upholding the rule of law,” the statement read, in part. “There are 400,000 unaccompanied migrant kids in the country, and there’s almost certainly some of them in our IPS schoolrooms.”
Public schools across the U.S. are legally required to educate students, regardless of immigration status. Plyler v. Doe, a landmark Supreme Court case from the 1980s, found it unconstitutional to deny an immigrant student access to a free, public K-12 education.
‘A safe and welcoming place to learn’
In addition to pushing back against Rokita’s actions, faith leaders issued an appeal directly to Gov. Mike Braun.
“Tell your attorney general to stand down,” said David Greene Sr., president of the Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis. “Tell him to stop using our children’s classroom as political theater.”
IPS Commissioner Ashley Thomas launched a Change.org petition seeking support for the district and its students.
It had more than 1,200 signatures at the time of the Black Church Coalition’s gathering.
Jerry Davis III, representing Crossroads AME Church on the north side, said as pastors, the faith leaders understand something policymakers sometimes forget: “When you disrupt a school, you destabilize a community.”
“We cannot and will not be silent about that,” he said. “Every child, every race, every culture, every immigration status deserves a safe and welcoming place to learn.”
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Mirror Indy reporter Carley Lanich covers early childhood and K-12 education. Contact her at carley.lanich@mirrorindy.org or follow her on X @carleylanich.
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