Ian Andre Roberts, of Guyana, is accused of trying to evade arrest.
Authorities also found Roberts (shown at right) in possession of "a loaded handgun, $3,000 in cash, and a fixed blade hunting knife."
Jeff Stein, broadcaster and political analyst, said most of Iowa cannot understand how get go to this point.
"There is a big difference between our few big cities, Des Moines of course the largest, and most of the areas of Iowa," Stein told AFN. "You get places like Des Moines and Iowa City and they start having protests because we should not throw an illegal alien out of the country. The rest of the state is scratching their head and wondering how he got hired to begin with."
Jackie Norris, chair of the Des Moines School Board, told reporters that the school system worked with an outside firm to find candidates to hire. Still, Stein has questions.
"How did that fail? Was the board so eager to hire someone to check some boxes that they ignored the red flags?" asked Stein. "That's what the average Iowan is suspicious of in this rural versus urban split that keeps getting wider from a social and political standpoint."
Stein added that Norris is in a difficult position.
"Not only is she chair of the school board, but she is a democrat running for U.S. Senate and in fact sent out a fundraising pitch over the weekend saying that the school board situation had taken her eye off the ball to meet the goal for the quarterly fundraising report," said Stein. "So, it is an interesting position she finds herself in, a former chief of staff to Michelle Obama in addition."
Stein also pointed out that the Department of Education in Iowa "has made it very clear that regardless of whatever agency you are using to help you find candidates, it is the school board's responsibility to make sure that the I-9 form is accurate."
"And regardless of the immigration status, no one has yet been able to provide a satisfactory explanation for the fact that the now former superintendent was apprehended by ICE driving a Des Moines school district vehicle with a loaded handgun, a knife, and $3,000," said Stein. "This is a no-gun, no-tolerance policy that the school district has. It was a fireable offense for him to have the weapon in the vehicle, and now we know that because of his immigration status, he should not have been handling a firearm at all with we believe two prior criminal charges to prove it."
Defending Ed. raises parental concerns after arrestChris Woodward, AFN.net Reacting to a school district superintendent outed as an illegal immigrant, a public education advocacy group says one looming concern is public safety. Ian Andre Roberts, who oversaw Des Moines Public Schools, was arrested September 26 by ICE agents. The federal agency called him a "criminal alien" from Guyana, who tried to evade arrest, and who was found to be "in possession of a loaded handgun, $3,000 in cash, and a fixed blade hunting knife." Rhyen Staley, director of research at Defending Education, said his organization's first reaction was sympathy for parents and their concerns for safety. "They hired someone who definitely has a very questionable past," Staley told AFN. |
The ICE press release announcing the arrest of Ian Andre Roberts also stated that he has "prior weapons charges."
Roberts resigned from the superintendent position on Tuesday. Prior to that, Roberts had been suspended without pay.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported Tuesday that "Roberts had been under the impression from a prior attorney that his immigration case was "resolved successfully."
Stein, who is also an attorney, did not buy that information.
"As a lawyer myself, one of the things I heard so often from a client who came to me after a bad experience was 'my old lawyer messed up' or 'I didn't understand that from my lawyer, and so when the best response that the former superintendent can muster and he has hired some of the top lawyers in Des Moines to represent him," said Stein. "If the best they can offer is 'He was told by another lawyer it had been resolved,' that gives me flashbacks of every bad client I ever had."
