This video examines the case of Dr. Ian Roberts, former superintendent of Des Moines' largest school district, who was sentenced to prison for misrepresenting his US citizenship status on an I-9 employment form. Despite being a highly educated former Olympic sprinter and DEA undercover agent who fled Guyana in 1994 due to death threats, Roberts was found to have no legal right to work in the US. The case highlights how immigration enforcement can disproportionately affect individuals regardless of their qualifications, as Roberts' 1996 arrest for gun possession (sealed) and subsequent failure to disclose it during immigration applications created permanent inadmissibility. His story raises questions about how communities balance legal compliance with the value of qualified professionals, as evidenced by protests from students and parents demanding his release and the fact that no African-American candidates applied to fill his position after his departure.
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Dr Ian Roberts Sentenced to Prison then DeportationAjouté :
Welcome back to the channel, y'all. If you've never been here before, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. Please click the bell next to the subscribe button so you're notified every time a new video goes up on Soflow TV or every time we upload a update to any of the stories that we follow. We follow all these stories through to the end. For the people who've been here for a minute, you already know that we've been following the story from the very beginning. And I told you, hit the subscribe button, click the bell next to it so you're notified when the update gets here. Here's an update to this story. Now, the ex head of the school district was sentenced to some time in prison for misrepresenting his US citizenship.
I remember doing this video and every time I said desus I had so many people in the comment section that's not how you say it. It's de mo de mo de mo de moines. Listen I'm going to try to skip that word as much as possible because for some reason my brain will not allow me to say it the way how you've been taught to say it. I say it how I see it.
Anyways, here's the real tea, though.
So, the former superintendent of Iowa's largest school district was sentenced on Friday. They sent the brother to prison, y'all. And funner joke aside, I knew they were going to send him to prison because he is black, because he is highly educated. And before you go off saying it's not because he's black Soflow, it's because he was illegal, I will point out to you a Caucasian police officer who's been in this country, overstayed his visa by many years, went and got a job in Chicago as a police officer. He was arrested by ICE.
He was brought into ICE custody. He was checked out as somebody who should not be here. Do you know that they released him on bond on immigration bond? And do you know that when that Caucasian police officer was released on bond pending a hearing for his case, the same police precinct that had hired him for all these years rehired him back to his same position he was in before.
Mind you, he came here on a visa. He overstayed his visa. He has no legal right to be here in the country, but he is a Caucasian man. And he is in the position of a police officer, full uniform and a gun with bullets.
And he has been charged to serve and protect and to uphold the law and to enforce the law as a illegal immigrant.
So before you go getting your panties in a bunch and telling me about this guy and the superintendent, I want you to keep the same energy all the way across the board. Okay? All right. Without further ado, let's get all the way into it. So upon completing his sentence, Ian Roberts, Dr. Ian Roberts, will likely be deported back to his native Guyana. His story runs much deeper, though. He said in court, "I regret what I have done every single day." This is what he said right before the judge handed down his sentence. Now, the judge could have went really harsh and given him a whole lot more time, right? But they did not. So, before the hearing, Dr. Ian Roberts lawyers told the judge that Dr. Dr. Ian Roberts actually fled his homeland in 1994 because he had been a police officer and he was one of those police officers who did a lot of undercover sting operations for uh DEA kind of work, drug enforcement agency kind of work. So things were starting to get really dangerous in the country for him because people were starting to find out. The bad guys were starting to find out that that's what he was doing, right? Infiltrating drug gangs, busting drug gangs. We had no idea. I just thought he came to the United States of America as a athlete and on a scholarship and got through and then decided he wasn't going to go back. He was just going to stay here. But apparently the story is much deeper. So Dr. Dr. Ian Roberts actually became the first black educator to run that entire school district, the largest school district in I in Iowa.
He was hired in 2023 to lead the district with about 30,000 students at his responsibility. This is a hefty huge hu I can't state huge enough responsibility. These are people's children that are put into your care. And if you remember correctly right when he was arrested all the people who hired him, who worked with him, who worked alongside him, even the parents of the children who went to the schools, they protested on his behalf. When they were asked if he was let go, would they rehire him back to his position? They said immediately and without a doubt. That was the answer because he was just that good. So before the sentencing, his lawyer confirmed that look, Dr. Roberts made a fatal mistake when he completed a I-9 to work with Desynous public schools, falsely affirming that he was a United States citizen and his lawyer wrote in a 173 pages brief to the US District Court for the Southern District of Iowa. Imagine your lawyer sitting there writing 173 pages of [ __ ] that you just have to say to the judge. Honestly, the judge probably didn't even care about 173 pages. Three pages in, that judge already knew what it was going to be.
So, Dr. Ian Roberts. He was arrested in September by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. And this shocked that entire school district and it sparked a walk out by hundreds of middle and high school students and protests by angry parents demanding that he be released.
Now, I want you to think about that, right?
The reason why they were demanding that he be released was because he was the best to have ever done what he was doing and their children were benefiting. Now, if I take you back to that story about the Caucasian police officer in Chicago, which you can go look up, why was he able to be let go and they found value in him enough to ignore his legal immigration situation and put him back on the job, back in uniform, back with a gun and a badge. But a man like this who actually is highly educated, who has worked in the system for many many years and who knows what he is doing when it comes to the children, he actually benefits the children. So if it's really about making America a better place, shouldn't they be trying to hold on to people like him? I mean, let's be fair, right?
We can see how they give favor to who they choose to give favor to and then they take from who they choose to take from. No matter how qualified you may be, we already know what the agenda is.
Now, for two decades, Dr. Roberts had worked in school districts across the country despite lacking authorization to actually work in the USA. And with his trademark flashy suits and his matching sneakers and his frequent appearance at school and other public events, Dr. Roberts quickly became a beloved figure in Iowa, a diverse city in a Republicanled state with an overwhelmingly white population. Let that sink in as well. He was into sneakers and all that cuz he was very athletic. This is a guy who competed in the Olympics.
Now, you know, you have to be the best of the best to make it to the Olympics.
So, the US Department of Homeland Security tracked down Dr. Roberts in Iowa after federal immigration officials had issued a final removal notice for him back in 2024 to have him deported cuz he had been trying to adjust his status on multiple occasions for multiple years and he was being rejected because of a particular situation that happened that they just would not let that fly. So, Dr. Roberts fled with when agents tried to apprehend him as he was driving to work in his districtisssued Cherokee Jeep. He was later arrested with the help of the Iowa State Patrol.
I remember how that went down. They said he took off first as if he was going to lead them on a high-speed chase and then he drove into like some corn fields or something and he got out of the car and he took off running on foot and of course they went out there and they got him. Could you imagine being dressed in those nice flashy suits and your trademark sneakers and here you are running through cornfields trying to escape immigration agents?
ICE made a spectacle of his arrest, doubling up on state troopers in addition to ICE officers in tactical gear as if they were entering a combat against an army.
You know, again, when they arrested that Caucasian police officer, uh, who is also an illegal immigrant, they arrested him as if he was one of the boys. And again, he has been let go since. And he has been working again as a police officer. And by the way, there was a Jamaican guy who I believe it was in Maine where he too was working as a seasonal police officer and they spoke highly of him and they wanted him to be a part of their team and he was caught up in the whole ICE raid thing as well and then he was deported swiftly back to Jamaica. So again, you got to ask yourself, how come some people are deported for the same things that others are actually put back on the job and sent back to work and ignored as if nothing happened.
So again, ICE made a big old spectacle of his arrest. Dan Hunter, who heads uh the art advocacy group, said in a statement that was included in the brief inside the jeep that he was driving, the police said that they found a loaded handgun that was wrapped in a towel and they found a hunting knife and they found $3,000 in cash. Shortly afterwards, Dr. Roberts resigned from his job, which paid him an annual salary of almost $300,000.
When they revealed his salary, there were many Americans who were quite upset cuz they were like, "God damn, he making $286,716 a year." I mean, that's that was his actual salary.
and they gave it to a damn illegal immigrant. That's a job that was supposed to be given to a African-American.
But here's the thing, they didn't find a person who qualified to do that job that was African-American.
And now that he is gone from that position, none has applied.
So, you know, it's kind of like running out into the construction sites and having the construction guys scatter the people who are doing the roofing and the people who are mixing the concrete and laying slabs. It's like doing raids on the farms and the people who are picking our cucumbers and our watermelons and our tomatoes and our oranges, they're they go running all over the place, right? and ISIS rounding them up and people are cheering, "Yes, get them out of here. Get them out of here. They're taking our jobs."
And then we watch buildings, houses undone, construction projects fall way behind because there are no freaking Americans that are stepping up to do the job. Then we watch fruits and vegetables rotten in the fields when usually they would be on our shelves in the in the grocery stores.
Now they rot in the fields because ain't no damn American going out out there in the sun to bend over and pick freaking cucumbers and pick watermelons and pick oranges and pick all the stuff that we see in our produce section when we go shopping.
But we celebrate that they are being rounded up, but then we complain that we can't get the things that we used to get. Make it make sense. You can't have it both ways. So, end of the day, he was collecting a huge salary, which by the way, he was proven to be educationally qualified.
So, in January, Dr. Roberts pleaded guilty to making a false statement for employment and one count of unlawfully possessing a firearm while being in the country illegally. Now together the charges carried a possible sentence of up to 37 months in federal prison. But Dr. Ian Roberts lawyers asked the judge to sentence the educator to probation.
Of course, the judge was not going to sentence him to faking probation, right?
You're talking about a Republican judge.
They're talking about a Democratic uh or I guess he was registered as Democrat and he wasn't even supposed to be registered to vote. It said that he never voted but he was registered as. So he is not violent and he will receive the ultimate punishment of banishment from the United States is what his attorneys wrote. I mean you're going to kick him out of the country, right? Looking at all his foibless, failures and successes while living in this country, he came to love, his successes actually outweigh his failures.
Now, you could argue with that all you want to, but most of us who are sending children off to college, university, or whatever, you tell your child, make sure you pick something that you really like to do, a career field that you're going to wake up every day and be happy to go to work.
You know, that's what happiness is. You find something you absolutely love to do and you make it pay you and you do it until you can't do it anymore. That way, you're not even looking forward to a retirement age because you wake up every day to do what you love to do and you're getting paid to do it. That's what he did. He is a educator and he loves it.
And he went to the highest of it, PhD level, and the paycheck came with it.
$289,000 a year. Most of you listening to this, you would hope that you or your offsprings brought home a salary of $289,000 per year. He's not a super athlete as in somebody who plays in the NFL or the NBA, but he makes that kind of money, right?
Okay. So, with that said, his failures really did outweigh um his success really did outweigh his failures. Their brief included a biography of Dr. Roberts that noted that he was born into poverty in one of the world's poorest nations without a snowballs chance in hell of him succeeding. And yet he made an enormous impact in each community that he has worked in. They have backtracked. They went and they asked everybody in all the places that he has worked. Tell us about uh Ian Roberts. What was he like? Nobody has said anything bad about him.
Everybody has spoken highly of him. Dr. Roberts, it said, had been abandoned by his father, but he became a top student despite having worked as a child to help to support his family. Now it also noted that he was a Olympic sprinter, qualified for the Olympics and went to the Sydney games in 2000 where he represented his country and it said that he left for the USA on the advice of the Gion government because of the threats that he had faced for his police work he was doing there.
Remember we told you in the beginning of this video that he was a undercover police officer doing drug sting operation like DEA agent in his country and things got so bad for him he started receiving a lot of death threats and all that and it was actually government officials who told him that it was best for him to go off into the United States of America and see what he can do there.
So, following Dr. Robert's arrest, Department of Homeland Security publicized his criminal history, including a 2020 arrest in New York on a charge of criminal possession of a weapon, the details of which have been sealed. So, we can't even get that anymore. I don't know because plea deal or his lawyers were able to get it sealed. So, Mr. Ian Roberts or Dr. Roberts. According to Department of Homeland Security, he was also cited in 2021 for a minor firearms violation again in Pennsylvania related to his storage of a hunting rifle inside of his vehicle. The thing about him though is it was always the guns. I think he was more paranoid than anything else. Now that we know his background as a DEA agent back in his country, you got to understand that the United States of America is a melting pot. So say for instance, right, if you are a top cop in Jamaica and you have busted some of the biggest gangsters and those gangsters have henchmen, they have men who are waiting to take your life.
wherever they'll find you at. And they're spread out everywhere.
So, your government says to you, "Hey, you know, you don't have to go into witness protection, but we're going to give you a visa and we're going to send you off to the United States of America.
See if you can make something of your life there." And you take it and you go only to realize that there is a huge population of your own people here.
So now you're paranoid cuz you're like, "Shit, the people who want to take my life from back home, they're probably here and it's probably easier for them to get away with it here cuz nobody would be able to explain how the hell I got killed or why I got killed."
So I could see now why he was paranoid because you know we keep asking ourselves if you are that highly educated why were you always getting caught with a gun? Why did you feel the need to always have a gun around?
And a part of me said it was because he was in these places where it was mostly Caucasians, which could also explain him being able to weed the herd. Like if it's mostly Caucasians in the areas that he is at, more than likely people who might want to do him harm from back in his country, they would not be in these areas. Right.
Right. And then he would always keep a gun to protect himself just in case cuz you never know. That paranoid feeling and that undercover cop life. It never left him and I think it worked to his detriment as well. Uh Dr. Robert's lawyer did not mention these arrests though in the briefing, but he argued that the Department of Homeland Security had subjected him to media demonization.
The lawyer pointed out that the Republican politicians in Iowa were paritting an official press release that described Dr. Roberts as a criminal illegal alien with multiple weapons charges and a drug trafficking charge who should have never been able to work around our children. That is how they portrayed him at a press conference.
He was never a drug trafficker and he never had a drug trafficking charge. So in their court filings, Dr. Robert's attorney said that he had first tried to establish his permanent residency back in 2001 after marrying a US citizen. But his application was denied because he had failed to disclose that he had been arrested back in 1996.
That was when he first got caught with a gun. So, if Dr. Roberts had been properly represented, this issue would have been avoided is what his attorney said. In hindsight, if he had gotten a good lawyer back then and had proper representation, he this wouldn't be an issue. Arrest without conviction do not make aliens inadmissible to the United States.
Again, arrest without convictions do not make aliens inadmissible to the United States. He was arrested. He was never convicted. Therefore, if he had proper representation, he would have gotten his papers. He chose to go it alone, though. So, Dr. Roberts continued trying to establish permanent residency over the years, his lawyer said. Now, while Dr. Dr. Roberts tried to adjust his status three more times. This initial mistake by Dr. Roberts with the gun issue back in 96 that sealed his fate. His lawyer said in the background of his career for the next 24 years, his denial of his adjustment of status, it haunted him like a ghost. And eventually here we are today because it derailed his life and his career.
So there you have it y'all. They sentenced him to two years in prison minus time served and he was arrested back in September of last year. So we have September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April, May. So that's two years sentence minus 9 months. So he will be doing another year and three months and he'll be out. That's how the cookie crumbles.
That's how the story ends.
We'll still follow the story cuz his life is very interesting. So I want to know what it's going to be for him when he returns to his country of birth. I want to know if the government officials are going to welcome him with open arms. I want to know if his higher education is going to be used to good use. I want to know if he's afraid that he might have had enemies that are still around from back in his working as a sting DEA agent kind of police officer undercover.
Are there any people there who still want to hurt him today?
I just want to see the outcome of this and I also want to know when he is deported and what life is going to look like for him on the other side. So stay tuned. Hit that subscribe button. Click the bell next to the subscribe button so you're notified every time a new video goes up on Soflow TV and every time we do a update to any of the stories that we cover. I'll catch you in the comment section and on another video. I'm out.
Peace.
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