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ICE arrests superintendent of Iowa's largest public school district
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency arrested Ian Andre Roberts, who is the superintendent of the Des Moines (IA) public school district. If you've been following along with this aspect of the culture war, you probably figure he was arrested for abetting or protecting a student or faculty or staff member from them. But no; the guy is, according to ICE here illegally and was given a final order of removal in May 2024. ICE is strongly implying he never had any work authorization beyond a long-since-expired student visa. It seems to me pretty bold for someone here without work authorization to be in such a high-profile position. Even more surprising for him to be hired; the district claims to have done a background check on him; you would think this would result in them finding out he was not authorized to work and not being hired. Someone screwed up there.
Other aspects are that he had a weapons possession charge in Pennsylvania from 2021, but this was a pissant ("5th degree summary offense") thing about having his deer rifle on his seat still loaded. More serious is that he fled the ICE agents when stopped; his car was found with a loaded handgun, a hunting knife, and $3000 in cash. I don't much care about the illegal-alien-in-possession aspect; making a whole range of normal activities super-illegal based on a status offense is a tyrant's trick. But fleeing certainly seems to indicate a guilty mind rather than some sort of error or misunderstanding on ICEs part.
At first I thought they might have the wrong guy; there's an Ian Andre Roberts from Guyana who competed in the Olympics. But no, that's actually the same guy.
On reddit, /r/desmoines is up in arms... about the arrest, of course, not about the school district hiring a guy with no work authorization.
Iowa is a constitutional carry state.
What percentage of men have hunting knives in their car? 100%? I've had some sort of knife on my person at all times where it was legal and practical since I was like 12 years old. A pocket knife is as much a part of my pants as my wallet is.
$3000 cash? Who cares?
If you pulled me over and tried to write this story about me it would be like: "man found with a loaded handgun (normal where I live), multiple tactical knives (a leatherman in my pocket, and the one that fell between the seats and I never found), spotting equipment (binoculars I keep in the glovebox for monitoring the situation), and hundreds of thousands of dollars of untraceable cryptocurrency (my coinbase account viewer on my phone).
I hate that this is highlighted on these stories.
The story here is: illegal immigrant given job as head of DMPS. Apparently the weapons charge he had was bad enough that he was given a deportation order by the Biden administration in 2024. Maybe that was a legit gun charge?
"Had gun in car" is a pointless non-fact.
I like when then they bust someone and scarily state that he had a few guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition in his home. Pretending as though that is noteworthy or strange.
I mean, aside from his woke crap (which was likely a grift), this guy sounds like a good Red Triber. Carries a knife and handgun, goes deer hunting, presumably thinks physical activity is important, etc. If it weren't for the woke stuff, I'd have wished he tried to become legal; he probably could have managed it after his Olympic appearance. But he didn't.
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It’s a relevant fact. Not to ICE, you’re right that they like police often toss prejudicial technically-facts in press releases all the time. But to the district, because it’s against policy to carry guns onto school properties there, so if those are regularly in his car they are regularly showing up at schools. (Now do I care actually, and is that a good policy? Not actually sure.)
This would only matter if he was arrested on school property or on his way to/from school.
Also, while it might technically violate the policy, it seems like it is also utterly unenforceable at scale. Letting everyone walk through a metal detector is feasible if expensive. Searching every car which enters the school parking lot is just not feasible. From a safety point of view, people keeping their guns in their cars seems closer to them keeping their gun at home than them keeping their gun on their person or in their bag or briefcase.
I would also estimate that people who keep a handgun in their glove compartment are feeding the illegal gun market, which seems bad.
From a CW perspective, this also pretty much destroys his woke credentials, I would say. Being a school official who hunts is one thing. But while hunters carry pistols for defense against boars and the like, my priors for anyone who keeps a gun in their glove compartment is that the gun serves for self-defense against fellow humans. OTOH, if his area is rural and has a severe coyote problem, that would make things look different.
This is Des Moines, it's not gonna be rural enough to have a serious problem with feral hogs or whatever, and carrying a gun to defend against coyotes as a grown, lone human is... unnecessary.
Now technically as a matter of law, you can generally have guns in the car in the parking lot of a facility that bans them. Your car is your personal property.
It depends on if the parking lot is considered to be on the facility's property - I know some federal facilities are like that (the parking lot is "federal property", and then there's another "controlled area" beyond that). For schools, a lot of gun laws are I believe based on the distance from the school, if not based on "yes the parking lot and green fields are school property". If I'm correct about the distance thing, I'm sure there's a case out there where someone couldn't (or was legally found that they could) have a gun or something in their own home due to being within that limit.
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You don't have that crypto in the car with you any more than I have the cash in my bank account in my phone, that crypto is actually in some coinbase server somewhere and unless it's Monero, it's very much traceable. It's not the same. If you had a Ledger with you, that would be analogous.
My point is to illustrate how deceptive reporting is on these things. My choice of “coinbase app on my phone” was a deliberate choice for the exact reason you are stating.
I don't see how the reporting is deceptive. They're implying that this illegal immigrant from Guyana is a sketchy character and it seems like he is a sketchy character. How did he come to get a highly paid job in the administration? How did he pass the background check? Why is there all this cash in his car? Why did he try to flee law enforcement? These questions are probably not unrelated.
It's not a crime to have lots of cash nor should it be. But it is useful in trying to analyse the situation.
Not all people with certain kinds of obnoxious tattoos are criminals. But they do send a message and wisdom involves receiving that message and calibrating appropriately.
This is profoundly circular
"The media is trying to make them look sketchy, and from media reporting, they seem sketchy, so that makes sense"
"The media is trying to make ISIS look like bad guys and from media reporting, they seem pretty bad..."
They could just be bad! It is very, very likely that an illegal immigrant from Guyana who gets a position of high office is a sketchy character. Even without the cash, guns and so on he'd still be a sketchy character.
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Reporting on things is always deceptive. "High School Graduate Gunned Down While on Stroll" was essentially the initial Michael Brown reporting. If you read the OP's news article, they frame all these allegations as allegations made by ICE, which is a far less credulous stance than federal law enforcement would be given by NBC news if this guy was being arrested on lynching charges.
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The earlier weapons charge anyone has been able to find is a penny-ante summary offense about having a loaded deer rifle on the seat of his parked car. It's not clear whether that charge had anything to do with his deportation order, nor whether that is the February 5, 2020 weapons charge that ICE is claiming exists. ICE is implying he last entered the US in 1999 on a student visa, but this clearly isn't the case since he competed in the Sydney, Australia Olympics in 2000. It does seem clear that either ICE has screwed up big time, or Des Moines Public Schools has.
Not aware of the law here: what's the legal status of illegal immigrants possessing firearms? IIRC In theory it was at least an ITAR issue for dumb reasons ("export") until the first Trump term when regular ol' guns left that list.
Federally speaking, there's a specific statute prohibiting possession (or sale to) to illegal aliens, or to legal aliens on non-immigration visas (with a tiny number of exceptions not relevant here):
The ATF has taken an unusually even-handed approach to this matter and does not consider the bare possession charge to apply to nonimmigrant aliens (though they can only purchase lawfully from private sellers), but it defines those who have overstayed their visa as specifically not in nonimmigrant status.
Theoretically speaking, this only applies to firearms or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate/foreign commerce, but I wouldn't be my dog's life on the ATF making a distinction.
In practice, prosecutions are rare.
Constitutionally speaking, there's been some recent cases about how much the illegal immigrant must know that they are illegal, (caveat: I can't find if he was retried; the man was almost certainly guilty under the new standard of proof, but that doesn't always mean much). The prohibition itself hasn't made it to SCOTUS, but it's been pretty universally upheld by appeals courts. Some states prohibit possession by even federal-permitted lawful aliens (or even non-citizen US nationals), and those are on sketchier constitutional ground in my opinion, but they've also been difficult to challenge for procedural reasons.
Thanks!
I wonder what that means for the legality of the "I am visiting the US and want to shoot a gun" folks. I've seen billboard ads for "shoot a machine gun" in at least Vegas and some red-state cities.
I guess that might not be legal "possession", though.
Renting a gun at the range is legal and not considered possession as long as it stays at the range.
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One of the nonimmigrant visa tiny exceptions is :
It's... much easier to argue for recognized sports or permitted hunting than for machine gun tourism, though I'm not aware of any prosecutions in either case.
"Why yes officer, there is a bullseye downrange somewhere. It's very rare one of our new shooters actually hits it, though."
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I think it's complicated -- although in some cases having a hunting license makes it pretty OK. (Assuming he had one?)
Canadians deal with this all the time -- other than a hunting license in some state, if you have something like a letter of invitation to a pistol competition or something, maybe it's OK? I think there's some ITAR form that you might need to fill out for whatever guns you are bringing with you, but that wouldn't apply if he bought his hunting rifle in the US.
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its quite possible Des Moines Public Schools has an unofficial policy of not complying with immigration law. there is presumably a lot of this going on in the private sector i guess it should not be surprising if its happening in the public sector as well. also this seems to be a failure of the federal government. the federal government is able to coerce banks into acting as policeman for all their crazy money laundering laws. if the federal government were seriously interested in cracking down on immigration then they could just coerce private and public employers in a similar manner.
Non-commandeering says otherwise, with respect to public officials.
Laid out in a case against commandeering local police to enforce federal gun laws, no less
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