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A Maryland board of elections backed down in the face of legal threat from conservative groups and released unredacted voter registration records belonging to an illegal immigrant who served as the superintendent of Iowa’s largest school system, Fox News Digital has learned.
The records showed illegal immigrant Ian Andre Roberts, who is originally from Guyana, claimed to be a U.S. citizen.
“The records show us what we all know – Maryland is not serious about keeping noncitizens off the voter rolls,” American Accountability Foundation (AAF) chief Tom Jones, a conservative research group that advocated for the release of the voter registration records, said in a press release provided to Fox News Digital. “Sadly, there are likely thousands more non-citizens on Maryland’s voter rolls.”
The Prince George’s Board of Elections provided conservative legal group Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE) and AAF with unredacted versions of Ian Andre Roberts’ registration documents after initially releasing heavily redacted versions of the documents that blacked out Roberts’ sex, whether he checked the citizenship box, his date of birth and other information.
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The fresh documents, RITE said in a press release provided to Fox News Digital on Tuesday, show “Roberts affirmatively claimed U.S. citizenship on his voter-registration application, and that Maryland election officials took his word for it.” A copy of the unredacted documents reviewed by Fox News Digital on Tuesday morning show Roberts checked the “yes” box when asked “Are you a U.S. citizen?”
Roberts, who first entered the U.S. in 1994, was working as the superintendent of the Des Moines public school district when Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested him in September. Roberts was not legally permitted to work in the country after an employment authorization card expired in 2020, Fox News Digital previously reported.
The arrest of an illegal immigrant working in such a high-profile school position shocked conservatives and others, as additional details surrounding his lengthy rap sheet in the U.S. surfaced as journalists and other investigators looked into his history. Amid scrutiny over his past, it was soon discovered that Roberts was listed as a registered Democratic voter in Maryland, where he previously lived.
The Maryland State Board of Elections previously said Roberts did not vote in elections.
The revelation that Roberts checked in the affirmative that he was a U.S. citizen on voter registration documents further opens the door to scrutiny over illegal immigrants potentially voting in elections. RITE pointed to the Maryland Board of Elections previously stating that noncitizens are canceled from registration records after the “State Board of Elections (SBE) or a local board receive information regarding citizenship status by the voter, ‘self-report’ or a report to the jury commissioners” as a cause of concern for Maryland’s current voter removal process.
“This case demonstrates exactly why Congress enacted the NVRA’s public disclosure mandate,” RITE CEO and President Justin Riemer said of the release of the records in December. “When election officials attempt to hide eligibility records, the public loses the ability to verify that the law is being followed. Once the records were produced, we saw just how weak Maryland’s safeguards really are. This is unfortunately all too common around the country and federal laws do little to help stop noncitizens from registering to vote.”
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RITE and AAF filed a request for Roberts’ voter registration documents earlier this year under the National Voter Registration Act – a federal law that simplified voter registration processes when an eligible individual renews their driver’s license – and subsequently received heavily redacted records that did not include how he answered the citizenship question or even his designated sex.
Riemer led the charge in sending a letter to the Prince George’s County Board of Elections in November demanding the county turn over the records with fewer redactions as allowed by law. The election attorney, who previously served as chief counsel to the Republican National Committee, gave the county board until Dec. 1 while noting legal action could be in the future if the election board failed to comply.
Riemer joined Fox News Digital in a Zoom interview in November to discuss the voter registration records, redactions and Robert’s immigration case, summing it up as “shocking.”
“When I saw the news reporting, and they showed screenshots of the registration applications with all this information redacted, I was just shocked,” Riemer said last month.
“I’m an election law expert, not an immigration expert, but it doesn’t take one to see just how … broken the system has been,” Riemer said. “He has multiple criminal charges. He has worked in multiple school districts where, if they were doing the proper citizenship and work authorization checks, this should have been caught. It’s really just unbelievable how this guy has managed to jump around the country, working in school districts where he’s around children.”
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RITE took a victory lap in its press release announcing the unredacted documents, stating, “Rather than defend their position in court, county officials backed down and produced the unredacted records.”
Roberts was taken into the U.S. Marshals’ custody following his September arrest and is set to be prosecuted, DHS said in October. The federal agency has released the suspect’s lengthy history of run-ins with the law that stretch back to 1996, when he was charged with criminal possession of narcotics with intent to sell in New York.
Most recently, facing charges related to his arrest in September, which included him attempting to flee law enforcement officers, according to DHS. He was found to be in possession of $3,000 in cash, a Glock 9mm pistol and a hunting knife at the time of his arrest. Roberts was criminally charged on Oct. 2 with being an illegal immigrant in possession of firearms, according to DHS.
Roberts is no longer employed by the Iowa school system, with the Board of Educational Examiners revoking Roberts’ license following his arrest in September.
Fox News Digital reached out to the county and state boards of elections on Tuesday morning for additional comment on Roberts’ records, the state’s vetting process for noncitizens on voter roles and response to RITE’s press release, but did not immediately receive replies.
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