Why it was easy for an illegal immigrant to land top job in Des Moines’ public schools

The arrest of an illegal immigrant serving as the Des Moines, Iowa, superintendent of schools has exposed a broader problem in America’s public education system: Few of them are using E-Verify, the federal government’s tool to weed out people not authorized to work.

Iowa has revoked the education license of Ian Andre Roberts, the Guyanese immigrant who was helming the state’s largest school system despite his defiance of a deportation order issued more than a year ago.

Late Monday, the school board voted to put him on unpaid leave, and said unless he proves his work status by Tuesday, he’ll be fired.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Mr. Roberts on Friday, moving to enforce a final deportation order an immigration judge issued last year. Authorities said Mr. Roberts fled in his Des Moines-issued vehicle, then abandoned it and ran before being tracked down.

When officers later searched his vehicle, they found a handgun, which illegal immigrants cannot possess under the law.

ICE said the case should be a “wake-up call” to communities to better check their hires.

“How this illegal alien was hired without work authorization, a final order of removal, and a prior weapons charge is beyond comprehension and should alarm the parents of that school district,” said Sam Olson, director of the ICE deportation field office that covers Des Moines.

Jackie Norris, chair of the school board, said Mr. Roberts claimed to be a citizen.

She said he presented a driver’s license and Social Security card and filled out Homeland Security’s I-9 form, the paper-based process for verifying someone is eligible to work. She said the school system had no reason to doubt his claims until last week.

But experts said if the school system had used E-Verify, it could have blocked him and avoided the embarrassing black eye.

“Every school district in the United States should be using E-Verify, if simply to protect the children they are responsible for,” said Rosemary Jenks, policy director at the Immigration Accountability Project.

E-Verify is voluntary at the federal level, though some states make it mandatory for employers within their borders. A bill to add Iowa to that list cleared the state Senate last year but did not make it through final passage.

Of the more than 10,000 school districts in the U.S., only a few hundred are listed as users of E-Verify in the program’s database, run by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

A few of those districts are in Iowa, including Storm Lake and the Ballard Community school districts. Des Moines is not among them.

Mr. Roberts worked as a principal in Baltimore and at Anacostia High School in the District, neither of which was listed as a user of E-Verify. Nor were St. Louis and Oakland, California, where he was a senior administrator.

In the Washington region, Fairfax and Arlington counties in Virginia school systems are listed as users.

“It doesn’t make sense not to use every available tool to ensure that the people you are bringing into a school don’t have a history that would potentially raise security concerns,” Ms. Jenks said.

“It doesn’t make sense not to use every available tool to ensure that the people you are bringing into a school don’t have a history that would potentially raise security concerns,” Ms. Jenks said.

Des Moines school officials expressed sorrow at Mr. Roberts’ situation.

“Two things can be true at the same time. Dr. Roberts was an effective and well-respected leader, and there are serious questions related to his citizenship and ability to legally perform his duties as superintendent,” said Ms. Norris.

ICE said Mr. Roberts was in the U.S. on a student visa in 1999 and was ordered deported in 2024. The agency didn’t respond to an inquiry from The Washington Times on his status during the intervening years, though Mr. Olson’s statement made clear he had lost whatever legal work status he had by 2023.

His history seems to suggest decades of enrollment at schools for much of those intervening years. That included his bachelor’s degree at Coppin State University, a first master’s degree at St. John’s University in New York City and another master’s at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. He has also listed programs at Harvard University and Morgan State University and is working toward another master’s degree in business administration at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

At some point, he obtained a doctorate in education focusing on urban educational leadership from Trident University, an online for-profit school.

With a student visa and temporary work authorization, he could have obtained a driver’s license and a Social Security card, which could have been enough to fool the weak identity requirements of the I-9 paper form.

“If you are here in a temporary status where you get those and you overstay, there’s nothing to render those documents no longer valid,” said Matthew O’Brien, deputy executive director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

He said E-Verify is a sound system but its success depends on the government maintaining the data.

Mr. Roberts pleaded guilty to a firearms citation in Pennsylvania in 2021. He was charged with having a loaded weapon displayed in his vehicle on state hunting lands.

In a statement in 2022, Mr. Roberts questioned why he was stopped.

He said he was a legally licensed firearms owner and knew guns. He said he was a “trained commissioned military officer” but did not say which branch.

He said he knew the law prohibited him from entering his vehicle with a loaded gun while on Pennsylvania game lands, and he said he did not.

“I do not know the true intent of the officer who chose to randomly stop me while I was on my way out of the woods heading to my vehicle,” he said in the statement, posted to social media by the Millcreek Township schools in Pennsylvania, where he worked at the time.

National teachers union officials didn’t respond to inquiries for this article, but local school union leaders in Iowa took to social media to complain about ICE’s arrest.

“It is a dark, unsettling time in our country,” said Joshua Brown, president of the Iowa State Education Association. “This incident has created tremendous fear for DMPS students, families and staff.”

Mr. O’Brien said it was shocking that Mr. Roberts made it through so many school background checks, given the red flags.

“Nobody was watching the storefront here at all. Nobody engaged in anything resembling an appropriate level of vetting,” Mr. O’Brien said.

He suggested that the schools didn’t want to examine Mr. Roberts too deeply, perhaps because of his immigration history.

“It was shocking to me, but I can’t say it was surprising,” Mr. O’Brien said.

News reports said someone with Mr. Roberts’ personal details is registered to vote in Maryland. Noncitizens, whether in the U.S. legally or illegally, are not allowed to vote in national elections.