The Washington Examiner‘s Salena Zito said many people are concerned about the investigation into an Iowa superintendent arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which told her there was no “competent review” done on him.

ICE said Friday that it arrested Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent Ian Roberts in May 2024 after he fled from ICE agents, and he was later found after abandoning his car. The deportation order said Roberts was born in Guyana and came to the United States illegally, contradicting his claim that he was born in Brooklyn, New York.

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Prior to his job in Iowa, Roberts worked for the Millcreek School District in Erie, Pennsylvania, where he had several settlements exceeding $330,000. Zito said the search firm in Des Moines has not picked up these settlements, which raises questions about its efficiency, adding, “There needs to be transparency.”

“This is a person that we’re putting in, and this is what people in Erie said to me: ‘Look, I don’t care about the politics of this. What I care about is that there was not a competent review done of this man, and in not just in our school district, but also then going forward. We have passed him forward,'” Zito said on Fox Business’s The Bottom Line.

“And you know, it’s really tough for parents because parents want the best for their children. And when you put someone in that position, you expect them to be who they said they were,” Zito said.

The three lawsuit settlements regarding Roberts and Millcreek School District were “some sort of harassment issue,” a “gender issue” that demoted a “highly qualified person,” and one that didn’t have many details, according to Zito. She said the most interesting thing about Roberts’s time as superintendent is how he received a “meets all requirements” grading.

Zito also said she looked through Des Moines Register news reports when Roberts was hired in 2023, and the Millcreek school board “just gushed about him.” She said she asked, “What is going on there?”

IAN ROBERTS’S TIME IN ERIE UNDER SCRUTINY

Roberts’s lawyer, Alfredo Parrish, said his law firm filed the request for a stay with the federal immigration court in Omaha, Nebraska, in a bid to delay his client’s deportation.

The Justice Department opened an investigation into Des Moines Public Schools on Tuesday to determine whether it has engaged in employment practices that discriminate against applicants “based on race, color, and national origin.”