Ian Roberts, Superintendent of the Des Moines Public School System, was arrested, on September 26, 2025, by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) pursuant to a 2024 final deportation order. He has since resigned his position as Superintendent and faces federal criminal charges.
There are obvious lessons to be learned from the Ian Roberts scandal. For example, all school districts in Iowa should be required by law to use E-Verify, the system which ensures an employer is not hiring an illegal alien. A second lesson is that an applicant who lies about having a doctorate may lie to you about his other qualifications. A third lesson is that illegal aliens should not lie about being citizens.
Some lessons are not so obvious.
The first lesson is that even a good government can use past criminal charges, which were dismissed or otherwise never resulted in a conviction, to make you look bad, or, if you are bad, to make you look worse.
The Supreme Court of the United States has held: “The mere fact that a man has been arrested has very little, if any, probative value in showing that he has engaged in any misconduct. An arrest shows nothing more than that someone probably suspected the person apprehended of an offense.” Schware v Board of Bar Examiners, 353 U.S. 232, 241 (1957).
As the Des Moines Register noted, “Roberts’ attorney, Alfredo Parrish, suggested the [criminal records] claims were either already known or crimes that didn’t result in convictions. The government, he said, is ‘trying to put it into one document to make Dr. Roberts look dangerous.’”
No kidding.
In its initial September 26th press release, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced “Roberts has existing weapon possession charges from February 5, 2020 (emphasis added).” Eventually this was clarified by the Des Moines Register to indicate the charges occurred at the New York Port Authority in 2020.
On October 3, 2025, DHS issued a press release stating, in part:
His criminal record includes the following:
July 3, 1996: Charges for criminal possession of narcotics with intent to sell, criminal possession of narcotics, criminal possession of a forgery instrument and possession of a forged instrument in New York.
. . .
Feb. 3, 2020: Charges for second-degree criminal possession of a weapon (having a loaded firearm outside his home or business); third-degree criminal possession of a weapon (an ammunition feeding device); and fourth-degree weapon charges. A document from Feb. 4, 2020, indicates that the second-degree criminal possession charge was inchoate. [“inchoate,” is a legal term meaning the crime has been committed when the individual takes a “substantial step” even if the person ultimately fails to complete the crime.]
Jan. 20, 2022: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania convicted Roberts of unlawful possession of a loaded firearm.
Nov. 13, 1998: A charge for third-degree unauthorized use of a vehicle in Queens, New York, which was dismissed July 6, 1999.
Nov. 1, 2012: A conviction for reckless driving, unsafe operation and speeding in Maryland.
Sept. 26, 2025: Roberts was arrested with a Glock 9mm pistol and a fixed-blade hunting knife in his possession. He also had $3,000 in cash.
Oct. 2, 2025: Roberts criminally charged with being an illegal alien in possession of firearms.
Let’s break this down. Let’s start with the February 20th New York gun charges. The DHS initially claimed these were “existing weapon possession charges”. This would indicate the charges are still pending, awaiting trial. But, the Des Moines Register found that the court records on these charges are sealed. New York court records are only sealed if a charge has been dismissed. If charges are dismissed it is unfair to indicate that they are existing or part of a criminal record. Indeed, law firms specializing in services to those ensnared by New York weapons laws acknowledge that the result of dismissal and sealing is a clear record, not a criminal record.
DHS’s willingness to include dismissed charges in a “criminal record” is made plain by their including dismissed unauthorized use of a vehicle charges in Roberts’s “criminal record”.
Now let us look at the 1996 New York drug and forgery charges. Are we to believe that these charges have been pending for 19 years? And, by the way, if those charges were still pending in 2020, when Roberts was charged with New York gun charges, what is the likelihood that any of those gun charges would have been dismissed? Would New York have allowed Roberts to leave the country three times between 1996 and the gun arrests in 2020, not to mention gallivanting all over the U.S., both before and after the 2020 gun charges, if he had pending drug and forgery charges? His passport would not be seized? I am not coughing up the bucks to get a New York record of Roberts’s charges, but I would bet a few bucks those charges were also dismissed. (By the way, if the records are sealed, unless a law enforcement agency makes the request, a records check will not reveal that the charges were ever made.)
DHS exaggerated by claiming, “Jan. 20, 2022: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania convicted Roberts of unlawful possession of a loaded firearm.” Roberts actually paid a $100 fine for a misdemeanor charge of having a loaded rifle in a vehicle while hunting. This is a safety and hunting regulation, not a possession law. Roberts placed the rifle on the car seat so that a warden would be comfortable talking to him when he approached Roberts who had returned to his car after hunting. Obviously, Roberts wasn’t hunting during the time the loaded rifle was in the car. Nonetheless, Roberts paid the fine as many people do when it is not worth the time, money and effort to contest an unjustified ticket.
The arrest of September 26th to execute a final removal order is an arrest for a civil infraction, not a criminal one. So, it is not properly considered part of the criminal record.
DHS also claimed, at the time of this charge,”Roberts was arrested with a Glock 9mm pistol and a fixed-blade hunting knife in his possession. He also had $3,000 in cash.” The possession of the pistol, the knife, and the $3000 had nothing to do with this arrest. Possession of the knife and cash was legal. The pistol was only relevant to the subsequent charge of being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm, not to the September 26th arrest enforcing a final deportation order.
So the real “criminal record”, i.e. criminal law convictions, of Ian Roberts appears to be a $100 fine, in 2022, for violation of a hunting regulation he probably actually didn’t violate, and traffic offenses in 2012. It is not the “criminal records” list of fourteen arrests and convictions provided by the DHS.
Author: Donald Bohlken
Donald W. Bohlken of Indianola is an attorney and a retired administrative law judge with the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals. He worked for seven years combined at the Iowa Civil Rights Commission and Cedar Rapids Human Rights Commission as an investigator and then for 21 years as an administrative law judge at the Iowa Civil Rights Commission and the Department of Inspections and Appeals. He received his J.D. with Honors from Drake University in 1986.
[…] This is part two of a two-part series. You can read part one here. […]