Adam Shriver is a concerned resident of Des Moines.

Laura Belin’s been doing an awesome job keeping track of the situation with Dr. Ian Andre Roberts, the former Des Moines Public Schools superintendent who was detained by ICE on September 26 and resigned four days later.

I’ve been seeing a lot of misinformation floating around on right-wing spaces about this, so I thought I’d note a few that need to be corrected.

Former Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf shared multiple false and/or misleading points during a recent Fox News appearance.

Wolf claimed the Des Moines Public Sschools “clearly did not do any background check.”

Actually, as had been widely reported well before Wolf’s comments, the school district does background checks on all potential employees. In the case of Dr. Roberts a third party, Baker-Eubanks, conducted a background check.

Wolf also claimed Dr. Roberts had no work authorization when he was hired.

Even according to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement timeline (and we have to note that ICE has a recent history of being misleading if not dishonest), the “final order to deport” came in 2024. However, Dr. Roberts “affirmed to the district he was a U.S. citizen who was eligible to work in the district when he was hired in 2023.”

More recent reporting also noted that it wasn’t until April 2025 that a judge in Dallas opted not to reopen Roberts’ case. But Dr. Roberts was hired in 2023. As far as I’ve seen, there’s no mechanism for employers to find out if someone who previously was cleared is now ineligible, aside from the pre-scheduled periodic checks on employment status that occur every few years. So there’s no reason to think that the school district had any knowledge of this situation during or after the time Dr. Roberts was hired.

Wolf also claimed that Dr. Roberts “had a criminal record” when he was hired as evidence for his claim that no fact check was done. But as the Associated Press reported, the district knew that in 2022, he had pleaded guilty “to a minor infraction for unlawfully possessing a loaded firearm in a vehicle.” That charge stemmed from incident where he placed a hunting rifle in his car when pulled over by a game warden. The school district found his explanation plausible (as I would have, given his impressive career and public standing).

At least a couple of other false allegations are flying around.

Some Republicans have said “former Michelle Obama Chief of Staff Jackie Norris” hand-picked Roberts” as superintendent. First, Norris became the school board president in January 2024, so she was not leading the board when Dr. Roberts was hired in 2023. And second, as with any district, there’s a whole hiring process in place. The board president does not have sole discretion to hire whomever they want.

Republicans have accused Norris of calling for “radical empathy” for Dr. Roberts. That is incorrect. Her statement was more general, saying that we need to have empathy in this situation.

Here’s the full quote:

(I)t seems fitting to take a page out of Dr. Roberts’ book and ask the community to engage in radical empathy as we work through the situation together,” Norris said. “Radical empathy is the recognition that we can disagree and still empathize with each other, the respect of others, humanity. This concept will be essential as we wait to learn more.

Does it sound sympathetic to Dr. Roberts? Sure, since she’s quoting a concept he developed. But given that many students and members of the greater Des Moines Public Schools community have been traumatized by these developments, it makes sense to call on others to show empathy for the many affected people.

These points are just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve been seeing folks online point to some global conspiracy to hire more criminals (of course with Michelle Obama’s support), and also claims that Dr. Roberts has committed violent crimes.

But I thought this could be a good start to catching some of the false claims that are being used to distract from how dystopian it is for ICE to be bragging about detaining a high-profile leader in the Des Moines community.