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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.
There has also been questions about his education credentials as well. I see two extreme interpretations of the current situation. Either he is extremely unlucky and has been a victim of ICE and now the internet sleuths have been activated and is now is whole life is being painted in the worse possible light or he is a serial grifter archetype. Laura Powell has a breakdown here: https://x.com/LauraPowellEsq/status/1971811032235753770
The other weird thing is in that twitter thread from Laura Powell it shows he was married and presumably married to an American for a long period of time. It seems to me to be a massive screw up if you do not become a citizen through marriage if you are not already a citizen.
It's also interesting to read his statement about the hunting rifle while imagining he is either this unlucky victim of circumstance or he is the grifter. He even implies that maybe it was not a case of luck but rather that he had been targeted due to race and that the citation was due to him trying to create a safer situation for the law enforcement officer. His statement could definitely be true. There is no doubt that there are law enforcement people out there that might see you place a rifle back into your vehicle temporarily and then write you up instead of letting it slide. (https://www.yourerie.com/news/local-news/millcreek-superintendent-issues-statement-after-receiving-hunting-citation/)
He also has not made everything up because is is an olympic athlete and did compete in the Sydney 2000 Olympics where is ran 1:52.32 in the 800m qualifier. (https://worldathletics.org/results/olympic-games/2000/27th-olympic-games-6951910/men/800-metres/heats/result)
Some people are claiming he is was able to get a pass due to his ethnicity but maybe he was able to get a pass because of his sporting accomplishments. Maybe the school board thought that employing an Olympian would help inspire kids regardless of his actual suitability for the job itself.
If you’re an illegal immigrant can you easily naturalize by marriage? Presumably you’d have to leave the US (and they would have recorded no exit stamp from his student visa 20 years ago, which means he’d have to pretend he left the country without passing through any controlled emigration point), pretend you’d lived abroad for 20 years, and then apply from abroad for a marriage visa (concocting another fake narrative about how you met).
Tbh last time I left the USA I did find it odd I didn't seem to pass through any specific exit point, so I'm not sure if that's hugely unusual
I had a domestic flight from Vegas to Los Angeles then my Los Angeles to overseas flight was just 2 gates over from my domestic flight at the terminal and the attendants said it'd be fine if I just boarded but as far as I can tell I didn't actually go through a formal border control spot.
The US doesn't make people leaving the country by air get a stamp, but flight (and ship) manifests are tracked for that sort of thing, I understand.
Needing permission to leave sounds a lot like the Berlin Wall, but I think makes sense for the EU combined area.
You don't need permission to leave. Just EU airports (and most in the world) are separated in international and domestic flight sections. To get in the international part you need to pass border control. And it is impossible to move between the two sections. I think that usa is unique in that regard.
US airports sometimes mix international and domestic gates. The difference is that on arrival international flights kick all the passengers over to customs and usually make them go back through security before flying onward. But that can just be rearranging a couple doors.
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