Des Moines, Iowa, public school leader detained by immigration agents, school board says

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Federal immigration agents have detained the head administrator of Iowa’s capital city public schools, the school board said Friday.

Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent Ian Roberts was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements agents Friday morning, school board president Jackie Norris said in a statement. A spokesperson for the district said they do not have additional information to share at this time.

“We have no confirmed information as to why Dr. Roberts is being detained or the next potential steps,” Norris said in her statement.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement records show Roberts in their custody at a county jail in western Iowa. But a Pottawattamie County jail employee said he is not currently at their jail. The jail in Council Bluffs is about 130 miles west of Des Moines.

An employee at the ICE office in St. Paul, Minnesota, which oversees operations in Iowa, said he had no information on Roberts’ arrest. An email to ICE’s national media line wasn’t immediately returned, and its phone rang unanswered. Additional calls to other regional offices in Omaha, Nebraska, and Kansas City, Missouri, also went unanswered.

Roberts, 52, began his term as superintendent of Des Moines schools, which serve 30,000 students, in July 2023. A biography for Roberts listed on the district’s website says he was born to immigrant parents from Guyana and spent much of his childhood in Brooklyn, New York.

Coppin State University’s website features an alumni profile of Roberts, who graduated from the school in Baltimore in 1998. In it, Roberts said his father immigrated to the United States in the 1980s, and his mother immigrated in the early 2000s.