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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.
As I understand it, the purpose of ICE is to make a big theatrical show of removing a few unfortunate illegals pour encourager les autres, and, even if that doesn't actually do anything on a large scale, at least make the administration look like they're taking a hard stance.
With that in mind, what better target than this guy? To others overstaying their visas: if they can get him, they could get you too. To the voting base: "Look, this guy thought he could get away with blatantly flouting the rules for two decades, and in case you thought he was an upstanding citizen, pillar of the community, Olympian, etc. He had weapons charges and was fleeing the law"
There are many purposes, but yes, the idea is to encourage self deportation, and discourage illegal crossings, by making the environment not feel overwhelmingly pro-illegal as it has for most of the past 30 years.
This is a good target for that, but it also just seems like an insanely flagrant violation that couldn't be ignored once anyone at ICE got a whiff of it. This is one of the highest paid public employees in a swing state.
Iowa isn't a swing state, democrats haven't won a statewide election there in over a decade- and that was mostly Obama's personal magic.
As an aside, it's actually crazy how much school district admins get paid, especially considering that what they mostly do is make things worse.
You need to excuse the olds.
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