Superintendent Ian Roberts of Des Moines Public Schools was detained Friday by federal agents. The reason for his detention was not clear, according to the school district.
In an email issued Friday afternoon by DMPS board president Jackie Norris announced that associate superintendent Matt Smith would take over Roberts’ role effective “immediately” and “until further notice.”
“This action follows Dr. Ian Roberts being detained by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents this morning,” Norris wrote in an email obtained by Iowa Public Radio. “We have no confirmed information as to why Dr. Roberts is being detained or the next potential steps.”
Roberts’ whereabouts are also, alarmingly, unclear. A list of detainees on ICE’s website lists the educational administrator in the Pottawattamie County Jail in Council Bluffs, but an employee at the jail told Iowa Public Radio that Roberts was “not located there.”
The ICE website claims that Roberts was born in Guyana. Roberts’ district profile states that the educator’s parents were immigrants from Guyana, and that he grew up in Brooklyn, New York.
Roberts has been responsible for the largest public school district in Iowa since 2023. At the time of his hiring, Roberts’ “focus on creating equitable experience for students” was openly celebrated by then-school board Chair Teree Caldwell-Johnson. He was named a top 100 education influencer by a K-12 magazine, District Administration, earlier this summer for his Reimagining Education program, a plan to modernize the district’s classrooms as requested by local residents.
It’s not the first instance that federal immigration officers have thrown their weight around to neutralize their dissenter’s influence. In June, masked ICE agents detained New York City Comptroller Brad Lander after he tried to escort a defendant out of immigration court.
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