NBC 6 News, Omaha: Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent Ian Roberts arrested by ICE

SULLIVAN: “Now to this breaking news. The superintendent of Iowa’s largest school district is in ICE custody.”

FERNANDEZ: “The Department of Homeland Security says they arrested Dr. Ian Andre Roberts today — Ian, excuse me. Iowa political director Dave Price has more for us now. Dave?”

PRICE: “Well, this protest behind us at the federal courthouse in downtown Des Moines started 45 minutes or so ago with a few dozen people. Now it’s probably a couple hundred. We will show you just this portion of it because some of the signs are — have some words on there we don’t want to show on TV. But they are protesting almost two different ways here. The main thrust is against these ICE apprehension efforts across the country that we’re seeing more of. And then specifically, some of the people are calling for Dr. Ian Roberts to be released. Now, this does have a couple layers of complications to this case. So, here’s what we know at this hour. Federal authorities say they tried to apprehend Dr. Roberts right around when school started this morning, a little bit before 9:00. They say he took off. They called for help from Iowa law enforcement, who then joined in the pursuit on the city’s south side. They say Roberts fled his vehicle and they ended up catching him later. They say, when they did catch him, they later found out there was a gun in his car, there was a hunting knife and $3,000. And they said late this afternoon that Roberts had an existing weapon possession charge from five years ago. He had been living in the United States, according to ICE, after he entered on a student visa back in 1999. And ICE is saying that there was an immigration judge who ordered that Robert should leave the country. That happened last year. The chair of the Des Moines school board that originally hired him, the board did, said that the board had no idea about any immigration issues with Dr. Roberts when they hired him. Roberts, we should point out, was previously an Olympic athlete back in the 2000 Olympics for his home country of Guyana. An ICE spokesperson late this afternoon put out a statement and said that the Des Moines school board should have known about this immigration status and question how the board could not have known. And the spokesperson in the quote said, ‘this should alarm the parents of that school district.’ We do have to point out the timeline here. The Des Moines school board hired him in 2023. This deportation order, according to ICE, came out in 2024. ICE is saying that Dr. Roberts is in custody in western Iowa. We have not been able to verify where exactly he is, but a lot of these people behind us who have gathered for this protest are demanding that he should be released. Back to you.”

FERNANDEZ: “Gosh, clearly, Dave, a lot going on out there and a lot more than initially meets the eye. So thank you so much for your reporting today.”

SULLIVAN: “Yeah, we’ll keep following this developing story. Dave, thanks.”