Former Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent Ian Roberts has been charged with possessing a firearm while in the United States illegally, according to a criminal complaint.
The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, said investigators found a firearm in Roberts’s car and three at his Des Moines home. The charges come after he was transferred to the Department of Justice’s custody.
The complaint also details that Roberts fled from officers in his Jeep before abandoning his vehicle.
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State patrol officers found Roberts in the brush, with the help of a canine unit, about 200 yards away, and he was then taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. A search of his vehicle rendered a loaded handgun wrapped in a towel, and a trace of the weapon revealed that a woman believed to be his wife purchased it in Arkansas in 2019.
The three firearms recovered in his home included another handgun, a rifle, and a 20-gauge shotgun.
ICE officers detained Roberts last week, alleging he was living and working in the U.S. illegally.
“ICE Des Moines today arrested Ian Andre Roberts, a criminal illegal alien from Guyana, in possession of a loaded handgun, $3,000 in cash, and a fixed blade hunting knife,” an ICE spokesperson said in a statement on Friday. “At the time of his arrest, Roberts was working as the Superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools despite being an illegal alien with a final order of removal and no work authorization.”
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Roberts, who resigned from his position as superintendent on Tuesday, is attempting to delay his deportation to his home country of Guyana.
After Roberts’s September arrest, the DOJ initiated a Title VII investigation into his former school district. The investigation will examine Des Moines Public Schools’ diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
