ICE arrested Des Moines (Iowa) Public School Superintendent Ian Roberts last week, not for protesting or interfering with the agency’s operations, but because it alleges he’s here illegally, is under a final order of removal, and has a prior weapons charge. If true, how did the 54-year-old Guyanese national fly under the radar for so long?
“Andre Ian Roberts ’98”
Fox News has reported Roberts entered the United States “with a student visa” (an F-1 nonimmigrant visa) in 1999, but CNN claims a profile of “Andre Ian Roberts ’98” on the website of Coppin State University in my erstwhile hometown of Baltimore is of the erstwhile Des Moines superintendent.
If both outlets are correct (and there is plainly a name discrepancy), Roberts graduated from Coppin State — where he was a track and field standout — with a degree in criminology, left the United States, and returned in August 1999 on a separate F-1 visa to attend St. John’s College in New York, where he purportedly earned a master’s degree.
Apparently while at St. John’s, he came to and went from the United States quite frequently, winning a gold medal at the Central American Championships in Bridgetown, Barbados, and qualifying for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, where he represented Guyana.
The Coppin State website contends he “earned a second master’s degree at Georgetown University”, while the Des Moines Public School website asserts Roberts “completed education programs” not only at Coppin State and St. John’s, but also at “Morgan State [Md.], Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business and an MBA at MIT’s Sloan School of Management”.
That’s a pretty impressive resume, but expect some aspects of it to come under scrutiny in coming days.
Hunter and “Trained Commissioned Military Officer”
That’s because if ICE has the right “Ian Roberts”, he may not have been totally forthcoming about his life story with some of his employers.
Roberts was named Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent in May 2023, and assumed the job that July.
Prior to that, according to the Coppin State website, Roberts served as “a special education teacher and principal in New York, Baltimore City and Washington, DC”, and “worked as a Network Superintendent of Schools in St. Louis, MO”. The website was undated, but at the time of its publication, Roberts was “the Chief Schools Officer in Oakland, CA”.
He was also the superintendent of the Millcreek Township (Pa.) schools for three years from 2020 to 2023 and a self-described “avid hunter”, which brought him to the attention of a Pennsylvania warden who discovered a loaded weapon in his vehicle on state game lands in December 2021.
Under 34 Pa. Cons. Stat. Ann. § 2503(a), with exceptions, it's a summary offense of the fifth degree "to have a firearm of any kind in ... any conveyance propelled by mechanical power or its attachments at any time whether or not the vehicle or its attachment is in motion unless the firearm is unloaded". That crime is subject to a fine and court records show he pled guilty in January 2022 and paid a $100 fine.
That arrest prompted Roberts to take to Instagram, as CNN reported, to defend his conduct.
If you don’t have Instagram, a copy of that letter was also published in the Erie Times-News on February 18, 2022, in connection with an interview about the incident when Roberts told the paper:
I would never presume to know what the officer's intent was and I don't want those who support me to vilify an officer who essentially was doing his job. ... But I struggled in the days and weeks after the incident and asked myself that question (if I wasn't Black), if I would have been treated any differently.
In response, Jason Amory, public information and education supervisor for the Pennsylvania Game Commission's northwest regional office, told the Times-News, “Game wardens are trained against discrimination based on race, gender or other factors and work to keep hunters and others safe.”
The paper was quick to note: “The rifle range at the game lands where Roberts was hunting, on Sampson Station Road in Greene Township, was the site of a fatal shooting in December 2020 and has been the site of frequent safety violations.”
Interestingly, Roberts described himself as “a licensed firearm owner” who is “legally licensed to carry a hunting rifle” — and as “a trained Commissioned Military Officer with a wealth of experience in firearms training and safety”.
Curiously, none of the websites lauding Roberts’ achievements mention any military service at all. Is it possible he was also a commissioned officer in the U.S. military, or previously did military service in Guyana?
If you do the math, you’ll see that Roberts, born December 18, 1970, would have been 27 years old when he graduated from Coppin State, and his home country did have an organization when he was there called the “Guyana National Service”, before it “was dismantled in controversy” in 2000.
In any event, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(5)(B) makes it a federal crime for a nonimmigrant to be in possession of a firearm, though subparagraph (y)(2)(B) therein provides an exception for any nonimmigrant alien “in possession of a hunting license or permit lawfully issued in the United States”.
From the state’s website, it’s apparently not that difficult to obtain a hunting license online in Pennsylvania (there are also veterans’ discounts), though a “non-resident adult hunting license”, for “nonresidents of Pennsylvania (from any state or nation) who are age 17 and older”, costs $80 more than the one for U.S. citizen residents of the Keystone State.
Still, as noted, carrying a loaded weapon in a vehicle in Pennsylvania is still a crime, even if you have a license, and under section 237(a)(2)(C) of the INA, “any alien ... convicted of ... possessing ... any weapon ... which is a firearm ... in violation of any law is deportable”.
Of course, nonimmigrant aliens who overstay their visas are also deportable.
The ICE Arrest
According to Fox News, Roberts had employment authorization until 2020 — the same year he was hired by the Millcreek Township schools — and hasn’t been legally authorized to work here since.
At some point, he was placed into removal proceedings and was ordered deported in absentia in May 2024 when he failed to appear in immigration court. A motion to reopen his case was denied by an immigration judge in Dallas on April 24.
That put him on ICE’s radar, and as per the agency:
During a targeted enforcement operation on Sept. 26, 2025, officers approached Roberts in his vehicle after identifying himself, but he sped away. Officers later discovered his vehicle abandoned near a wooded area. State Patrol assisted in locating the subject and he was taken into ICE custody.
A search of the vehicle uncovered “a loaded handgun, $3,000 in cash and a fixed blade hunting knife”. I suppose one could hunt with a handgun, of course, but not much is in season in Iowa with a firearm this time of year.
As for the cash, Roberts’ job came with a base salary of $286,716 according to the Des Moines Register, so he could probably afford to carry it, and some people don’t trust credit cards.
The I-9 Hiring Process
The Register quotes Des Moines School Board Chair Jackie Norris, who explained how the district came to hire an alien who apparently doesn’t have employment authorization:
In this case, Dr. Roberts completed the I-9 employment eligibility verification form and submitted the required documentation. ... Everything the district has on file indicates that Dr. Roberts affirmed that he was a citizen who was eligible to work in the school district.
The “I-9” is more precisely the Form I-9, the “Employment Eligibility Verification” form every U.S. employer must complete to comply with section 274A of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which makes it illegal to hire an alien in the United States without work authorization.
If you have been (legally) hired for a job in this country since 1986, you are likely familiar with Form I-9, because every employer (by regulation) must complete one for every new employee within three business days of hiring.
Under that regulation, employers must ensure that new hires attest to their employment authorization status (U.S. citizen or national; “lawful permanent resident”; or “alien authorized to work”), and must also “physically examine ... the documentation presented by the individual establishing identity and employment authorization”.
The Des Moines school district asserts “a third party was hired to conduct a comprehensive background check on Roberts and that Roberts completed an I-9”, both of which are permissible under the law.
What Documents Did Roberts Show?
Most applicants present their Social Security card and driver’s license at that stage of the process, two documents that Roberts would have had.
We know he had a driver’s license because the Pennsylvania game warden otherwise would have arrested him on that charge when he went to the car with the loaded gun, and as for the Social Security card, aliens can apply for Social Security cards provided they have work authorization (which Roberts reportedly had until 2020).
My guess is that Roberts stayed in employment-authorized status in the United States for 20 years by bouncing from one school to another and received his work card through his F-1 status.
That said, F-1 alien students are only supposed to be authorized for “off-campus employment” in “cases of severe economic hardship occurring after a student's enrollment in an academic program” or “in emergent circumstances as defined” by DHS.
Emergent circumstances are defined in that context as “world events that affect a specific group of F-1 students and which causes them to suffer severe economic hardship, including, but not limited to natural disasters, wars and military conflicts, national or international financial crises”. Guyana has long had its issues, but none that rise that to standard.
And even then, Roberts’ Social Security card should have been emblazoned with the words “VALID FOR WORK ONLY WITH DHS AUTHORIZATION”, sending whoever examined that document for Form I-9 purposes back to Roberts to ask for his employment authorization document.
That said, it’s not hard to get a fake Social Security card without such a restriction illegally, and if the Social Security number is your own, a check of that number on a bogus document would not reveal much.
Or, perhaps, Roberts applied for asylum.
Applicants for asylum can receive employment authorization within 180 days of filing their applications, but if he did seek asylum his work authorization should have been valid until he received a final order of removal in May 2024 — unless he filed an “affirmative asylum application” with USCIS and then failed to appear for the interview with USCIS.
That would explain how he ended up in removal proceedings, but nothing suggests he ever applied for asylum.
An Indictment of the Immigration System
Dr. Ian Roberts’ license was revoked by the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners after it “determined he is no longer legally allowed to stay” and he’s currently on administrative leave. I have a feeling his full story will be an indictment of our immigration system, and not in the way his supporters assert it is.