In a bizarre case, a top Iowa public school official is set to be deported after he was exposed as an illegal alien. When confronted, he led police on a chase that involved illegally obtained weapons.
Ian Andre Roberts, the former superintendent of Iowa’s largest public school district, was sentenced to two years in prison and is expected to be deported back to his home country of Guyana afterwards. Roberts had served as superintendent for two decades before authorities uncovered the truth.
An immigration enforcement operation in 2025 accused him of falsely claiming U.S. citizenship and submitting a counterfeit Social Security card during his hiring process. ICE officials first confronted him while he was in a school vehicle, which he used to escape and later abandoned in favor of hiding. State police located him and the vehicle, finding a loaded handgun and $3,000 cash hidden inside the vehicle.
A search of his home found three other weapons and DHS revealed that he had a prior criminal history that includes a narcotics possession offense. Roberts is married to a US citizen and sought to gain lawful permanent residency inside the U.S., but was denied because he lied about his prior arrests on his application.
This chilling case shows just how deep the effects of illegal immigration reach. The man responsible for overseeing 30,000 children and their teachers posed as an upstanding US citizen for two decades while secretly being an illegal alien, possessing a stash of unlawful firearms, and obscuring his past drug conviction.
Thankfully his arrest was not violent and did not put any children in danger, but there is no guarantee that others like him will follow suit.
Roberts’ willingness to flout our nation’s laws and lie his way into a critical position should serve as a wake-up call to every American about the dangers posed by illegal aliens. The Strong Borders Priority of passing a universal E-verify law would require all employers to screen job candidates for legal status upon hiring. We cannot allow criminals to endanger Americans by deceiving their way into the workforce.