Illegal Iowa Superintendent Exposed

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A criminal illegal immigrant has been arrested by ICE after lying about his background and serving as a high school superintendent.

The case has put a spotlight on hiring practices throughout the nation and launched a DOJ investigation.

In this episode, we dig into the details of the case with Civil Liberties Attorney Laura Powell and Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta Giacomo.

I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe.

This is a weekend edition of Morning Wire.

Joining us now.

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To discuss a public school scandal out of Iowa's Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta, Giacomo Hey, Amanda.

So we briefly covered this case this past week.

Quickly, would you set the stage for us?

Who is this illegal immigrant and when was he arrested?

Yeah, so ICE officers arrested 51-year-old Ian Andre Roberts on September 26th, and that was part of a targeted enforcement operation.

Roberts, who's from Guyana, he was in the U.S.

illegally and had a deportation order from May of 2024, and he also had a prior weapons charge from 2020.

He fled from ICE when he was approached, but was eventually arrested.

And at the time of his arrest, Roberts was illegally in possession of a loaded handgun.

He also had $3,000 in cash and a fixed blade hunting knife.

And of course, the big issue here, why this is so compelling, is that Roberts was serving as the superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools.

He was basically CEO of the school district, which has more than 30,000 kids in it.

So a lot of responsibility there.

Right, as I understand it, it's it's the biggest school district in the state.

So we have this past illegal weapons charge, according to ICE.

What else do we know about his background?

Yeah, so we know he entered the U.S.

from Guyana back in 1999 on a student visa.

He overstayed that visa and he tried to apply for immigration status, but that was unsuccessful.

And he was given that final order to be removed in May of 2024.

He was never a U.S.

citizen, though he apparently falsely claimed to be.

We also know that he had six children with five different women.

He disclosed that on this immigration application.

That's according to reporting from the Daily Wire's Jenny Tare.

His two oldest were born in Guyana and the others were born in the U.S.

As far as resume discrepancies, Roberts apparently obtained a doctorate from an online school a few years back, but he was claiming potentially a decade earlier that he had a doctorate.

Here's civil liberties attorney Laura Powell on that.

He claimed many times over the years to have a doctorate from Morgan State University.

I don't know, it's possible he did coursework there, but

he was calling himself doctor at least as early as 2012,

but he didn't get his doctorate until 2021.

So he pretended he had one from Morgan State.

Now, despite his immigration status, his criminal background, and potential lies on his resume, Roberts worked in education for more than 20 years.

He was a teacher, a principal, and he was a superintendent, not just in Des Moines, but previously at a Pennsylvania school district as well.

In light of all this, initially the Des Moines School Board, they held an emergency meeting and they put Roberts on paid leave.

The state then revoked his license to be a superintendent and he resigned on September 30th.

How did this happen?

How did Roberts slip through the cracks?

Yeah, I mean, it seems like a pretty egregious oversight here.

You know, we spoke to Powell for more information on that, and she sees it twofold.

First, you know, Roberts simply being a con man and a liar but also this ties into this obsession with dei goals and initiatives that can blind a lot of people and yet it does seem that the numerous background checks he's gone through through professional agencies somehow missed all of these major red flags um

you know he's lied a lot about various basic facts about himself, where he was born, when he was born, what degrees he has.

Those are the big ones that really seems like somebody should have caught before he got to the point where he's in his second superintendent job.

Pretty clear.

He was not born in Brooklyn, was not raised there.

And, you know, it's kind of absurd on its face that nobody noticed that he had a foreign accent when he claimed to be born and raised in Brooklyn.

You know, nobody seemed to have asked more questions.

Here's what Powell had to specifically say about how DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion possibly ties in here.

I think the reason why he was able to con them goes to this this trend in our education system of DEI that people wanted, you look at Des Moines School Board, they talk about how they need to have more diversity in their staff.

And I think they were very happy to have a black man who seemed to be perfect come in and they didn't want to ask questions.

And besides the fact that, you know, we're taught it's a microaggression to ask people questions like, where are you from?

If the person has an accent, I think people were hesitant to question him too hard.

That's my, you know, what I imagined was going on with these school board members who were, it's an all-female school board, and they seemed really enthralled by him.

Now, on this whole DEIB, the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division on Tuesday, they launched an investigation into Des Moines public schools to determine if they're engaging in illegal race-based employment practices.

The DOJ highlighted the district's website, and that says that they require their teaching and learning staff to match the student population in terms of demographics and cultural responsivity.

The district also apparently set goals to increase its number of teachers of color.

That was part of an affirmative action plan.

And they said they were prioritizing voices of people of color in addition to other DEI initiatives.

Now, commenting on this investigation, Harmeet Dillon, who's the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, she tied this into immigration law.

On X, she wrote, quotes, be on notice.

If you ignore federal immigration laws, we may investigate you too.

Now, another interesting tie-in here is that the chair of the Des Moines School Board is Jackie Norris.

Now, she was chief of staff to former First Lady Michelle Obama back in 2009.

She's currently running for U.S.

Senate as a Democrat in Iowa.

Norris said that Roberts stated he was a citizen on his I-9 employment eligibility form, and he provided a driver's license and a social security card when he was hired.

Here's Norris in her own words.

The individual who was leading our district with energy and enthusiasm was detained by ICE agents.

Since that time, this district, the Iowa Department of Education, the Department of Homeland Security, and others have learned that his citizenship and status and eligibility to work in the United States is not what we were led to believe.

New details have led to more questions, really important questions.

For all of us, this is not what we anticipated when we welcomed Dr.

Ian Roberts into central Iowa and the Des Moines School District a little more than two years ago.

It is a sad and troubling end for an individual who gave many people, especially our students, hope.

Is anyone else from the district commenting on this?

Did they run proper background checks?

So the Des Moines Public School Communications Director, Phil Roeder, he said that a background check was conducted by a third party before Roberts was hired.

Baker Eubanks, the company used to run this background check, they told the Daily Wire that they disclosed that Roberts had this criminal history, but the district went ahead to hire him anyway.

They didn't find anything on his immigration status, though, apparently.

Now, additionally, reporting, again, from Jenny Terre, shows that Roberts was never run through the federal e-Verify system.

That's the system that checks to see if workers are in the country legally and if they're eligible to work.

In fact, it seems that Des Moines Public Schools actually never enrolled in e-Verify at all.

But was the district mandated to run Roberts through E-Verify?

So Iowa doesn't require employers to use E-Verify, but currently there is a bill pending that would require this from Iowa employers.

Unsurprisingly, this specific case has sparked a lot of calls for E-Verify to be mandated everywhere.

Scott Makowski, who has decades of experience in immigration enforcement, and he recently testified before Congress about ICE, he told the Daily Wire, quote, the hiring of an undocumented individual with a criminal history and a deportation order into a position of educational leadership exposes a profound vulnerability in our systems, one that E-Verify could have sealed at the outset.

Makowski added that this is not merely an oversight, but it's a betrayal of public trust.

He said it demands immediate reform to safeguard our institutions and communities.

Another direct quote, how many more are out there?

Pass A-Verify immediately.

You know, so a lot of calls for change as this all continues to unfold.

We've seen a lot of calls to action after some other standout illegal immigration cases.

Oftentimes, those are really brutal and fatal.

We'll just have to see how this one shakes out.

Yeah, we'll see where this goes.

Really, a remarkable, frankly, unbelievable case that exposes a lot of institutions, as you've laid out.

Amanda, thanks for reporting.

You're welcome.

That was Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta-Giacomo, and this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.