Ian Andre Roberts, the fired Des Moines, Iowa, schools superintendent whom the feds say is in the country illegally, twice claimed to be a citizen when he registered to vote in Maryland.
Mr. Roberts checked the “Yes” box on the citizenship question in his 2011 registration, and selected “Yes” when he completed an electronic registration five years later, according to documents obtained by the Public Interest Legal Foundation.
In fact, Homeland Security says, Mr. Roberts is in the country illegally and has never held citizenship, making him ineligible to vote in federal elections.
Election officials had previously released versions of the forms with Mr. Roberts’ citizenship answers redacted. PILF prodded Prince George’s County, where Mr. Roberts was registered, and the county coughed up the unredacted version Monday. PILF shared the documents with The Washington Times.
The case highlights a major problem with some states’ registration systems: They rely on would-be voters to be honest about their citizenship status.
Logan Churchwell, PILF’s research director, said the state could have avoided the issue by using the federal government’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, which could have flagged Mr. Roberts’ noncitizen status.
“Election office staffers in Prince George’s County had no option but to accept Mr. Roberts’ claims to U.S. citizenship as true without a tool like SAVE,” he said in a letter to the State Board of Elections. “It’s simply unacceptable to millions of Americans for this pattern to repeat.”
Elections Administrator Jared DeMarinis declined to comment on the new revelations or PILF’s call for use of the SAVE system.
Previously, Mr. DeMarinis had said the state is reluctant to drop names from its rolls over citizenship questions for fear of removing legitimate voters. He said it requires a registrant’s own self-request to be removed, or a “report to the jury commissioners.”
“This office will not disenfranchise a voter based upon partial or unsubstantiated evidence. The right to vote is a sacred right that has been expanded through sacrifices of many before us,” the board said in September, after it was revealed that Mr. Roberts was registered in Maryland.
Mr. Churchwell, though, said the state is ignoring easy tools that would help.
He told The Times that Maryland does use SAVE for other purposes, so it was odd that the state would not do so for voting records.
“To say that we’re going to draw the line at the election board, that’s just silly,” he said.
Mr. Roberts became a focal point for questions after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers tracked him down in September in Iowa, where he was the superintendent of public schools in Des Moines.
ICE said he lacked legal status and officers found him in possession of guns in his vehicle and home when they finally caught up with him. His arrest produced an initial outcry from immigrant rights advocates, but as details emerged suggesting Mr. Roberts had repeatedly misled about his status, those defendants were largely silenced.
He now faces federal charges for lying about his legal status on his I-9 work authorization form, filled out for the superintendent’s job. He also faces a federal gun charge.
Des Moines officials said Mr. Roberts also misled about his educational history, and the Des Moines Register reported last month that he also didn’t disclose a criminal conviction to the school system.
Records show Mr. Roberts twice filled out forms to register to vote in Maryland. One was a registration card in December 2011. His voter record indicates he was moved to the state’s inactive voter rolls in 2016.
He submitted an electronic registration in December of that year, and in 2017, was moved back to the active list. The place of registration is still redacted from the documents, but the State Board of Elections hinted earlier this year that it was done at a motor vehicle office.
Records show election officials processed and mailed absentee ballots for Mr. Roberts’ address on file, even after he was living and working in other states — including Iowa.
Mr. Roberts remained on the voter list despite never having cast a ballot. State law calls for voters to be moved from the active list if they fail to vote in two successive federal elections.
Maryland officials had cautioned against assuming the Ian Roberts on its voting rolls was the same man Homeland Security has identified as an illegal immigrant. PILF said it used data-matching techniques to confirm it is him.
Homeland Security says Mr. Roberts has twice had legal visas, entering legally in 1994 and 1999. That second visa expired in 2004. He repeatedly applied for, and was denied, a green card signifying legal permanent residency.
He was approved for a work permit several times, including most recently in 2019. It expired in 2020. An immigration judge in 2024 ordered him to be deported.
Mr. Roberts, in several posts on LinkedIn, has sounded a defiant note about his situation.
He referred to the questions surrounding him as a “storm.”
“Storms wash away many things — some useful, some not,” he wrote. “But what’s left behind is often fertile ground for rebuilding.”
He also said he’s “been mischaracterized.”
“I’ve watched decades of work reduced to a single moment, a single phrase, a single frame. I’ve questioned my calling. I’ve lost sleep. And in those moments, I didn’t need silence or spectacle — I needed support grounded in truth. I needed leaders who would ask questions with curiosity, not contempt,” he said.
“So to those who stand beside truth, thank you. And to those who wait for a misstep — I ask you to lead differently. Ask the hard questions. But ask them with integrity. Listen fully. Resist the easy storyline and instead seek the deeper truth,” he said.
