Jenny Turner is a public school mom and a school speech therapist. She lives in West Des Moines.
It might be prudent to wait for all the facts before writing an opinion piece on ICE detaining Dr. Ian Roberts, the superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools. It is true that there is a lot we don’t know. Which leads me to the central question: why don’t we know?
Dr. Roberts has allegedly had a removal order for nearly a year and a half. Why did the district not know about this? Why was Dr. Roberts arrested suddenly, in the most dramatic fashion, for what amounts to late paperwork (if true)? Why was no thought put into the effect this would have on the community and the kids? Why was it not done mindfully to minimize the impact?
Many of us are highly skeptical of the official story. We are doing our own investigative journalism on social media, because we don’t know if he was a citizen, or if he lied, or if the removal order was for another person with the same name.
It doesn’t add up or make sense. Why would you arrest a community leader, whom hundreds of kids look up to, without getting that figured out and clearly communicated?
ICE has not been a trustworthy agency at all. Slamming distraught women to the ground, waiting for the lunch rush to violently arrest someone at a public grocery store, losing track of hundreds of people, detaining citizens, admitting to journalists that they’re looking for people of color, calling people “animals,” making up crimes to cover up improper deportation of legal residents to torture facilities abroad, publicly displaying complete lack of weapons training. Why should we believe them now?
ICE is supposed to be a public agency of public servants that serves the people. We the people deserve transparency and competence. We deserve an agency that works for us.
We also deserve politicians who work for us. We don’t deserve statements like those on offer from U.S. Representatives Ashley Hinson and Randy Feenstra, or Governor Kim Reynolds, which showed 100 percent support for the Trump administration with 0 percent work to find out what is happening or support the community. They are obviously working for political points, not us.
We don’t deserve for the Des Moines Public Schools to be smeared with no information about what happened, even though school districts in four other states and Washington, D.C. also vetted Dr. Roberts. The Des Moines School Board is doing an excellent job in my opinion of providing the information they have, reassuring the community, and being cautious to be as accurate as possible with limited information.
We don’t deserve statements from politicians crafted carefully with elections in mind, disregarding our pain and shock. We may not have the facts, but it is a fact that people are rightfully upset. We don’t deserve silence either—if you’re in politics you should care about the people.
Regardless of where the facts of this case end up, a lot of people gave the game away on this one. We need people in government who have the guts to care about people and the truth. Here I have to praise Iowa City—maybe the “People’s Republic of Iowa City” isn’t such a pejorative.
To the people of the Des Moines area, Iowa, and the rest of the U.S., I would say don’t settle for less than government of the people, by the people, and for the people. That government must find out and tell us the facts in Dr. Roberts’ case and take appropriate, not theatrical, action.