For more than a decade, an illegal immigrant who lied his way into running one of Iowa's largest school districts sat on Maryland's voter rolls, having sworn under penalty of perjury that he was an American citizen. It took a national scandal, a federal prison sentence and relentless pressure from conservative watchdogs before the state finally took his name off the list.
Maryland removed Ian Andre Roberts from its voter registration rolls on June 2, just days after a federal judge sentenced him to two years in prison, the Washington Times reported. The removal closed an embarrassing chapter for a state that had spent months resisting calls to act.
Roberts, a native of Guyana, built a career as a school administrator across the country — including jobs in Maryland and Washington, D.C. — despite lacking legal authorization to work, according to Fox News reporting. He ultimately landed the top job at Des Moines Public Schools in Iowa.
That house of cards collapsed when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested him. Roberts, who ABC7's WJLA reported had previously received a deportation order tied to an earlier weapons charge, was found with a loaded handgun, a hunting knife and roughly $3,000 in cash. He was later sentenced to two years in federal prison for lying about his citizenship to obtain his superintendent post and for being an illegal immigrant in possession of firearms.
A Decade on the Rolls
The voter-roll angle is what alarmed election-integrity advocates. According to records reviewed by the Washington Times, Roberts first registered to vote in Hyattsville in December 2011 and was added to the rolls in January 2012, checking the box affirming he was a U.S. citizen and signing under penalty of perjury. His registration went inactive in 2014 and was canceled in 2016, but he re-registered that same year using a Greenbelt address and was back on the rolls by 2017 — again falsely attesting to citizenship he never held.
State officials repeatedly downplayed the matter. Maryland Elections Administrator Jared DeMarinis insisted "no one by that name has ever voted in the state of Maryland," and the Board of Elections stressed that "being on the voter rolls does not equate to having voted in an election." There is no record that Roberts ever cast a ballot. But critics counter that an illegal immigrant remaining registered for years is exactly the kind of vulnerability that erodes public trust.
A Fight for the Records
Getting answers required a fight. Conservative groups including the American Accountability Foundation and Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections pressed legal demands before the state released previously redacted voter records, WJLA reported.
For Republicans, Roberts has become a symbol. State Delegate Matt Morgan called him "the perfect symbol of everything wrong with the Maryland State Board of Elections," while Public Interest Legal Foundation President Christian Adams argued the saga shows Maryland simply isn't serious about election integrity.
Roberts is off the rolls now. But the case leaves a pointed question for a border-security-minded public: if a high-profile illegal immigrant could stay registered for more than a decade, how many lower-profile names remain?