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Notes -
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.
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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