Liberals rioting and throwing tantrums over the deportation of illegal alien criminals living in the U.S. should take solace from the fact that some have managed to achieve success before ICE could catch up with them.

One glaring example is Ian Andre Roberts, who was employed as superintendent of Des Moines, Iowa public schools until last month when he was arrested for illegally entering the country from Guyana and fraudulently working in the U.S. using false credentials. He was also in possession of illegal weapons and had prior narcotics and weapons charges.

Roberts’ past is complicated at best. According to Fox News, he arrived in New York City on Aug. 30, 1999 “on an F-1 student visa to attend St. John’s University in Queens.” But a report on Wikipedia claims he entered the U.S. on a visitor visa in 1994, and played soccer at Brooklyn’s St. Francis College before earning his bachelor’s degree from Coppin State University in Baltimore in 1998. Fox reported that Roberts’ final visa expired in 2004 and he “was not legally authorized to work in the U.S. after his employment authorization card expired in 2020.”

The Des Moines Register said Roberts received a “court-issued ‘final order of removal’ for his deportation in May 2024,” which he apparently ignored. In April 2025, an immigration judge in Dallas denied a motion to reopen the case “in absentia.”

When he was arrested on September 26, Roberts was found not only to be in the country illegally but also in possession of a handgun, wrapped in a towel and stowed in his school district issued vehicle along with a knife and $3,000 in cash. Three more weapons were reported to have been found at his Des Moines home.

He was arrested by ICE agents “with assistance from the Iowa State Patrol” but fled the scene. A press release from ICE stated that when officials approached Roberts, “he identified himself then sped off, abandoned his vehicle, and hid in a brushy area about 200 meters away,” where he was apprehended a short time later.

The press release detailed Roberts’ criminal record, beginning with charges of possessing narcotics “with intent to sell” in New York in 1996. Additional minor offenses followed, and then he was charged with weapons possession in 2020, 2022, and 2025.

The Associated Press reported that Roberts has stepped down from his position as head of the largest school district in Iowa with 30,000 students and plans to fight deportation, claiming that a prior attorney told him his immigration status had been “resolved successfully.”

The Des Moines School Board first placed Roberts on paid leave, but changed it to unpaid leave when the weapons charge and his questionable past became news. On Sept. 28, the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners revoked his license, again according to the Des Moines Register.

While Roberts claimed to have received a doctoral degree from Morgan State University in Baltimore, the college revealed that he did not in fact earn a degree, even though he attended Morgan State from 2002-2007. His claims of a second master’s degree from the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University and an executive MBA program at the MIT Sloan School of Management have both been debunked. Neither school has a record of his attendance.

Lax oversight

Whether through negligence, lax oversight, faulty vetting, or because Roberts was a master at reinventing himself, previous employers were also duped and are now crying foul. Erie, Pennsylvania’s Millcreek Township School District is threatening to sue Roberts and the search firm who recommended him, citing an “egregious breach of trust.” Roberts served as superintendent of the Millcreek district for three years before moving on to Des Moines.

The search firm apparently failed to discover Roberts’ falsified citizenship status and academic credentials. On October 1, Millcreek Township released a statement, as reported by msn.com, which reads in part that the district is “most disappointed to learn about his lack of citizenship and educational credentialing, as Roberts represented to the District that he was a U.S. citizen and that he had earned a Doctorate in Education ... The egregious breach of trust that was perpetrated by Roberts, who we hired to lead our schools, is unconscionable.”

Other reports that have surfaced since his arrest show Roberts was a busy man. In addition to his stints at the school districts in Pennsylvania and Iowa, he was principal of a then all-black high school in Washington, DC, in 2012, and worked for the St. Louis, Missouri public schools as a “network superintendent” from 2015 until 2018.

Track star

Various sources confirm that earlier in life, Roberts competed in track and field events, including at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, where he represented Guyana in the 800-meter dash. While he reportedly won a gold medal at the 1999 Central American and Caribbean Championships in Athletics in Bridgetown, Barbados, he was unsuccessful at the Olympics.

In the U.S., he competed in the Big East Conference while attending St. John’s University, and also competed in the NCAA finals in 1999. His athletic career included several international competitions but appears to have fizzled out after the 2000 Olympic Games.

Costs and consequences

For years, conservatives have raised concerns over the costs and consequences of illegal immigration, as demonstrated by the case of Ian Andre Roberts. In a free society, the task of tracking and monitoring these individuals presents substantial challenges, particularly given the monumental problems created by the open borders policy of the Biden Administration. When DEI and other hiring practice constraints are added to the mix, it becomes easier to see how imposters such as Roberts might slip through the cracks.

The Roberts saga has become a headline-grabbing sensation. The New York Amsterdam News, for example, called the various visas, green cards and other bureaucratic protocols “America’s broken immigration maze.” The article describes a complex system that would benefit from simplification and better oversight, improvements that might make sense but are unlikely to happen given the contentious political climate regarding immigration.

In January 2024, a report summarizing the testimony of Steven A. Camarota, Director of Research for the Center for Immigration Studies, provided a clue as to the staggering cost of illegal immigration, including impacts on education.

For example, nearly 60 percent of illegals use one or more government-sponsored welfare programs, costing taxpayers “approximately $42 billion annually.” Illegal immigrants accumulate about $7 billion annually in emergency medical costs, and illegal immigrant children cost the U.S. public education system more than $68 billion per year.

The Camarota report called for, above all, stricter enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. And despite incessant protests from the left, it appears that through its Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies, the Trump Administration is attempting to do just that.

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