Ian Roberts made an impression in Des Moines.
In just over two years as superintendent of the city’s public school system, Dr. Roberts earned praise for boosting academic results and showing up in classrooms. He marshaled support for a bond referendum. He met with Iowa’s Republican governor, posing for a photograph that she shared on social media.
But according to federal prosecutors, Dr. Roberts did all of that without permission to work in the United States. And he continued even after a judge ordered that he be deported.
On Thursday, Dr. Roberts pleaded guilty to two felonies in federal court in Des Moines and admitted to lying about his citizenship status on an employment form and to possessing guns while in the country illegally.
When he was arrested by immigration agents in September, people in left-leaning Des Moines were shocked, and many doubted the federal government’s claims. A protest sprang up downtown. Students walked out of class. Iowa officials said they had no idea that Dr. Roberts, who is originally from Guyana, was in the country illegally. He had told the school district and a state licensing board that he was a U.S. citizen.
But it became clear after his arrest that the superintendent’s tenure in Des Moines had been built on a foundational lie. The Trump administration, in the midst of its broader deportation campaign, seized on Dr. Roberts’s case as an example of the pervasiveness of illegal immigration and the ways the system had been exploited.
The plea agreement did not result in any charges against him being dropped, but federal prosecutors said they would vouch for a sentencing recommendation that included credit for accepting responsibility. Dr. Roberts, who is in his 50s, faces up to 20 years in prison before very likely being deported to Guyana, the country he once represented in the Olympics.
Officials with the federal prosecutor’s office in Des Moines did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the plea.
A spokesman for Des Moines Public Schools declined to comment on the hearing.
Dr. Roberts, who was known for his sharply tailored suits, appeared in the courtroom in downtown Des Moines wearing a green and white striped jail jumpsuit. His hands and legs were shackled.
He told a federal magistrate judge that he understood the charges against him. He said that he knew he had been in the country illegally and that he had lied about being a citizen on a government form. When asked how he wanted to plead, he said, “Guilty, Your Honor.”
The hearing, which lasted less than an hour, marked a stunning fall for an administrator who had climbed the ranks of the American education system with talent, charm and a pattern of lies and embellishment.
His lawyer, Alfredo Parrish, declined to speak in detail about the case against his client or about Dr. Roberts’s legacy in Des Moines.
“Dr. Roberts has come up and accepted responsibility for his conduct,” Mr. Parrish said outside the courthouse, adding that he planned to bring up “factors that could impact his sentence” at a sentencing hearing, which is scheduled for May.
A New York Times review of Dr. Roberts’s past revealed a talented and ambitious educator who accumulated degrees, wrote books and received solid reviews while bouncing from school system to school system. But that review also found red flags that went beyond his immigration status. Dr. Roberts had brushes with law enforcement, misstated where he earned a doctorate and bragged about receiving a “Principal of the Year” award from a university that said it had no record of giving such a prize.
For two years, Dr. Roberts led about 30,000 students and 5,000 employees in Des Moines. His secret life did not burst into view until Sept. 26, a sunny Friday about a month into the school year, when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested him after he was found hiding near a trailer park. They said he had fled from officers in a school district-owned Jeep, where a loaded handgun was later found.
Dr. Roberts, a former college all-American in track and field who competed in the 2000 Olympics, had been scheduled to challenge a second grader to a lighthearted race at an elementary school’s field day on the morning of his arrest.
Within days, as federal officials published details of his immigration history, Dr. Roberts resigned as superintendent. Some said the school board had not done enough to vet his credentials and suggested that its members resign. A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman said that Dr. Roberts “should have never been able to work around children.”
Since the arrest, the episode has lingered over Des Moines.
The Justice Department said it would investigate whether the district’s affirmative action goals and diversity hiring programs had violated federal law. The Des Moines School Board filed a lawsuit accusing a consulting firm of failing to properly vet Dr. Roberts during the hiring process. And Jackie Norris, a Democrat who was the chair of the school board at the time of Dr. Roberts’s arrest, dropped her campaign for U.S. Senate.
But the referendum that Dr. Roberts had pushed for, that asked voters to commit $265 million in bonds to overhaul the Des Moines school system, passed in November with more than 70 percent of voters in favor.
Dana Goldstein and Ernesto Londoño contributed reporting.
Mitch Smith is a Chicago-based national correspondent for The Times, covering the Midwest and Great Plains.
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