The arrest of an illegal immigrant serving as the Des Moines, Iowa, superintendent of schools has exposed a broader problem in America’s public education system: Few of them are using E-Verify, the federal government’s tool to weed out people not authorized to work.
Iowa has revoked the education license of Ian Andre Roberts, the Guyanese immigrant who was helming the state’s largest school system despite his defiance of a deportation order issued more than a year ago.
Late Monday, the school board voted to put him on unpaid leave, and said unless he proves his work status by Tuesday, he’ll be fired.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Mr. Roberts on Friday, moving to enforce a final deportation order an immigration judge issued last year. Authorities said Mr. Roberts fled in his Des Moines-issued vehicle, then abandoned it and ran before being tracked down.
When officers later searched his vehicle, they found a handgun, which illegal immigrants cannot possess under the law.
ICE said the case should be a “wake-up call” to communities to better check their hires.
“How this illegal alien was hired without work authorization, a final order of removal, and a prior weapons charge is beyond comprehension and should alarm the parents of that school district,” said Sam Olson, director of the ICE deportation field office that covers Des Moines.
Jackie Norris, chair of the school board, said Mr. Roberts claimed to be a citizen.
She said he presented a driver’s license and Social Security card and filled out Homeland Security’s I-9 form, the paper-based process for verifying someone is eligible to work. She said the school system had no reason to doubt his claims until last week.
But experts said if the school system had used E-Verify, it could have blocked him and avoided the embarrassing black eye.
“Every school district in the United States should be using E-Verify, if simply to protect the children they are responsible for,” said Rosemary Jenks, policy director at the Immigration Accountability Project.
E-Verify is voluntary at the federal level, though some states make it mandatory for employers within their borders. A bill to add Iowa to that list cleared the state Senate last year but did not make it through final passage.
Of the more than 10,000 school districts in the U.S., only a few hundred are listed as users of E-Verify in the program’s database, run by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
A few of those districts are in Iowa, including Storm Lake and the Ballard Community school districts. Des Moines is not among them.
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