A federal judge in Des Moines sentenced Ian Roberts, the onetime superintendent of the 30,000-student Des Moines Public Schools, to two years in prison on Friday, capping a prosecution that traced a two-decade career built on fraudulent documents and a deportation order that predated his hiring for the top education post. Roberts, who pleaded guilty in January to falsely claiming U.S. citizenship and illegally possessing firearms, used a counterfeit Social Security card to secure the superintendency in 2023, according to prosecutors.
Attorneys for Roberts said after the hearing that they expect him to be deported to Guyana once he completes the prison term. He has been subject to a final removal order since 2024, a fact that preceded his September 2025 arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as the Trump administration intensified its mass deportation push nationwide.
The allegations outlined by federal prosecutors painted a picture of nearly two decades of unauthorized employment across urban school systems. Roberts lacked legal work authorization “for virtually all of his two-decade career,” the U.S. attorney’s office in Des Moines alleged, a span that included teaching and administrative posts in Maryland before he took the helm of Iowa’s largest district. The Social Security card he submitted to the district’s human resources office was counterfeit, prosecutors said, and his claim of U.S. citizenship on employment forms was false.
His arrest in the early months of the 2025–2026 school year shocked a community that had embraced Roberts as a reform-minded leader. The Des Moines school board had recruited him from an assistant superintendency in the Baltimore area, betting that his background in urban education would help close achievement gaps in a district where more than half of students come from low-income families. Instead, the board was confronted with revelations that the superintendent’s own employment eligibility was built on falsehoods.
Roberts’s guilty plea in January averted a trial, and Friday’s sentencing closes the criminal case. The two-year term will be followed by likely removal to Guyana, his attorneys said. Roberts is a native of the South American country, and his immigration status had been unresolved since before he entered the U.S. education workforce in the mid-2000s.
The Des Moines Public Schools, which serves roughly 30,000 students, has been led by an interim superintendent since Roberts’s arrest. A search for a permanent leader is ongoing.