By O. Kay Henderson (Radio Iowa)
The superintendent who’s in a western Iowa jail after being arrested by immigration agents last Friday is fighting a deportation order, but not his dismissal from Des Moines public schools.
Alfredo Parrish, the lead attorney working on Ian Roberts’ immigration case, held a midday news conference. “We will today be sending a letter to the Des Moines School Board, authorized by Dr. Roberts, to resign his position,” Parrish told reporters.
The Des Moines school board had given Roberts until noon today to provide documents proving he is eligible to work in the U.S. or he’d be fired. In the letter announcing his immediate resignation, Roberts said he did not want to distract “the Board, educators and staff from focusing on educating the district’s students.”
Parrish said he’d been speaking with Roberts this morning and his client’s spirits were high. “We want you to know that Dr. Roberts’ greatest concern is about his students who he actually loved and the students who love him back and his staff,” Parrish said.
In May of 2024, a federal judge issued a deportation order for Roberts and an appeal to reopen his case was rejected earlier this year. Roberts thought “everything was O.K. and his case was resolved” in April, according to Parrish. “Dr. Roberts had a prior attorney,” Parrish told reporters. “This prior attorney was in Texas…I’m going to share a letter that was received from the prior attorney, telling (Roberts) his case had been closed successfully, and (Roberts) was under the impression that it had been.”
The letter released to the media today from a partner in a Pasadena, Texas, law firm indicated the case had “reached a successful resolution.” Parrish said Roberts’ new legal team has filed a motion to block the deportation of Roberts and they will be seeking to reopen Roberts’ immigration case. Parrish was asked why Roberts claimed to be a U.S. citizen and presented a Social Security card when he was filling out the paperwork to be paid by Des Moines Schools.
“Both of those things I’m able to respond to,” Parrish told reporters, “but quite frankly I don’t want to respond at this point — but as you may or may not know certain people coming into this country are entitled to get a Social Security number. We’ve thoroughly checked that out. That’s not our concern at the moment.”
During the 22-minute-long news conference, Parrish confirmed Roberts was born in Guyana in 1970, but declined to say whether Roberts was a U.S. citizen or if he was authorized to work in the U.S. Parrish says Roberts’ lawyers have not had access to their client’s immigration file. “Some questions we will not be able to answer,” Parrish said. “It’s only because we’re not going to get into the merits of this case yet because we’re simply just not prepared in four days to do that.”
Parrish indicated the case had been “juggling through” the court system for several years and it does not appear President Trump had any role in pressing for Roberts’ arrest.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced shortly after the news conference that it had opened an investigation of Des Moines Public Schools to determine if it has race-based employment practices. “DEI initiatives and race-based hiring preferences in our schools violate federal anti-discrimination laws and undermine educational priorities,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in the news release. “School districts must cease these unlawful programs and restore merit-based employment practices for the benefit of both students and employees.”
