Des Moines Public Schools superintendent detained by ICE
ICE officers clash with demonstrators outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility using smoke gas and plastic bullets to disperse crowds protesting against deportations in Broadview, Illinois, United States on September 19, 2025. Several hundred protesters had gathered near the Broadview ICE center, chanting against immigration enforcement policies. (Photo by Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on Friday, according to the school district.
ICE said Ian Roberts was in the country illegally from Guyana and was working as a superintendent despite having “a final order of removal and no work authorization.”
When officers conducting a “targeted enforcement operation” tried to approach Roberts in his car on Friday, the superintendent sped away, and the officers later found his car abandoned, ICE said.
Police helped find Roberts, and when he was taken into custody, the superintendent was in possession of a loaded handgun, a fixed-blade hunting knife and $3,000 in cash, ICE said.
Roberts came to the U.S. on a student visa in 1999 and a judge gave him a “final order of removal” in May 2024, ICE said in a statement. Roberts has weapon possession charges from February 2020, the agency said.
School district officials said in a statement they didn’t have information on “next potential steps” for Roberts.
Roberts joined the Des Moines district in July 2023 and “held educational leadership positions in districts across the U.S. for 20 years,” school board chair Jackie Norris said at a news conference Friday.
“There is new information that has been made public that we did not know, and have not been able to verify as to whether that information is accurate,” she said.
“There is much we do not know,” she said. “However, what we do know is that Dr. Roberts has been an integral part of our school community since he joined over two years ago. During his time with our district, he has shown up in ways big and small, and has advocated for students and staff and begun introducing concepts that will help us reimagine education for future generations of Des Moines students.”
(EL PASO, Texas) — A 15-year-old boy was detained for questioning in a shooting that left five teenagers wounded on Monday night near a playground at an El Paso, Texas, apartment complex, authorities said.
A barrage of gunfire erupted just before 9 p.m. local time at the Commissioner’s Corner apartment complex in east El Paso, Officer Adrian Cisneros, a spokesperson for the El Paso Police Department, told ABC News on Tuesday morning.
“The information that we have is that a group was getting together to get into a fight or some type of altercation when a male started shooting into the group,” Cisneros said.
Cisneros said investigators are aware of a video taken at the apartment complex that surfaced on social media and captured what sounded like 12 gunshots being rapidly fired. But Cisneros said it remains unclear how many shots were fired in the incident.
Police officers and firefighters responded to the scene and found five people, three males and two females ranging in age from 15 to 17, suffering from gunshot wounds, according to Cisneros.
One of the victims, a 17-year-old girl was possibly in critical condition, and four others sustained non-life-threatening injuries, Cisneros said.
Cisneros asked that anyone who witnessed the shooting or has information on who is responsible to contact investigators.
He said a 15-year-old boy was detained and was still being questioned Tuesday morning.
A memorial set up by Brown University outside of the Barus and Holley building on December 18, 2025. (Photo by David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — New details about how police caught up to Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, the 48-year-old former Brown graduate student who allegedly perpetrated a mass shooting at Brown University and killed an MIT professor, have emerged after a dayslong manhunt where he made a series of moves designed to evade authorities.
Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez said local police helped track down Valente, who was found dead in a New Hampshire storage unit, thanks, in part, to surveillance video and a detailed tip about a vehicle being driven by a person who noted odd behavior by the suspect.
“I’m being dead serious. Police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental,” the tipster told police, according to a complaint released by Rhode Island authorities. “That was the car he was driving.”
The tip and surveillance video, along with the use of license-plate reader technology led investigators to a car rental agency in Massachusetts.
There, police obtained a copy of the rental agreement with the suspect’s name, as well as video of the suspect that matched the videos of the person of interest seen on the Brown University campus on the day of the shooting, the complaint said.
That discovery ultimately led investigators to a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, where the suspect was found dead, officials said.
Financial records and video evidence confirmed that the storage unit belonged to the alleged suspect and that the rental vehicle was connected to both the Rhode Island and Massachusetts cases.
Authorities identified the suspect as Valente, a Portuguese national and former Brown University student whose last known address was in Miami, Florida. Officials said Valente died by suicide Thursday evening.
Officials confirmed that Valente was found with a satchel containing two firearms, and evidence recovered from the vehicle matched what was found at the Providence crime scene.
Federal authorities confirmed that shortly before 9 p.m. on Thursday, FBI SWAT teams executed court-authorized search warrants at a storage facility in Salem, which is where they found Valente’s body.
Portugal’s Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) confirmed to ABC News that Cláudio Manuel Neves Valente studied between 1995 and 2000 in the school’s physics engineering program, the same one attended at the time by slain MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro.
A 1998 announcement in Portugal’s official Diario da República referred to Valente’s appointment as a teaching assistant at IST and a 2000 notice in the same publication mentions his termination from the role.
A spokesperson for IST declined to comment further on Valente’s history at the institution, due to the ongoing investigation and out of respect for the friends and family of Loureiro.
Brown officials confirmed that Valente was enrolled at the university from the fall of 2000 through the spring of 2001 as a graduate student in physics, entering Brown’s graduate program in September 2000 before taking a leave of absence in April 2001 and formally withdrawing in 2003.
“He was not a current student, was not an employee and did not receive a degree from the University, attending for only three semesters as a graduate student until taking a leave in 2001 and formally withdrawing effective July 31, 2003,” Brown University President Christina Paxson wrote in a letter to students and faculty Thursday.
During his time at Brown, he was enrolled only in physics courses, which were typically held in the Barus & Holley building. University records indicate he has had no active affiliation with Brown for more than two decades.
Police said the suspect acted alone and that there is no indication, at this time, of additional planned attacks. Investigators have not identified any writings, known criminal history or clear motive.
Officials said forensic teams are still processing evidence recovered in New Hampshire, including firearms, and will compare it with ballistic and DNA evidence from the Providence crime scene.
Paxson said the university is still reviewing how the suspect gained access to the building. She said the building was unlocked that day because exams were being held, and the university will examine security procedures moving forward.
Investigators said Valente obtained lawful permanency in April 2017 and was issued a green card.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said in an X post that Valente received his visa through the diversity visa lottery program, and announced that, at President Donald Trump’s direction, she was pausing the program.
Each year, the State Department awards up to 50,000 immigrant visas to “winners” of the diversity visa lottery. The program was created by Congress in 1990 to allow applicants from countries with low rates of immigration into the U.S. to come here.
The winners are selected at random, but they must still go through a lengthy application process, which includes submitting criminal records, being interviewed at an embassy or consulate, and meeting other requirements, such as having a High School Diploma or two years of work experience. Applicants are then allowed to apply for lawful permanent resident status.
Investigators said they identified Valente by name late Wednesday night and weighed whether releasing his identity could cause him to flee or take further action.
Officials said they believed he might return the rental car in Boston or attempt to leave the area, and they wanted the opportunity to arrest him without alerting him that police were closing in.
Officials said it remains unclear exactly when the suspect took his own life, but noted that he signed into the storage facility but was never seen leaving.
The site was secured by federal agents, and investigators said an autopsy will help determine the timing of his death.
ABC News’ Armando Garcia and Christopher Looft contributed to this report.
Morgan Geyser booking photo, Nv. 23, 2025. Posen Village Police Department
(POSEN, Ill.) — “Slender Man” stabbing assailant Morgan Geyser is scheduled to appear in an Illinois courtroom on Tuesday for a hearing in which prosecutors are expected to request that she be extradited to Wisconsin, where she allegedly fled a group home over the weekend.
The 23-year-old Geyser’s court appearance comes a day after the Wisconsin district attorney, whose office prosecuted her in the high-profile 2014 stabbing case, called on the state Department of Health Services to send her back to a mental institution.
A Wisconsin judge signed an order in September allowing Geyer a conditional release from a psychiatric facility, where she had been held for a decade, to a group home in Madison. At the time, prosecutors objected to her conditional release, alleging she had “violent” communication with a man outside the facility and had read a book in the facility with “themes of sexual sadism and murder.”
As part of the conditions of her release, Geyser was ordered to wear an ankle monitoring device.
On Saturday night, Geyser allegedly cut off her monitoring device and bolted from her group home with a 43-year-old person she told authorities she met a couple of months ago at a church event, according to a criminal complaint.
Following a massive search, Geyser and her companion were captured on Sunday night at a Posen, Illinois, truck stop, more than 165 miles from Geyser’s group home.
Geyser’s companion, identified by the Posen Police Department as Chad Mecca of Madison, was charged with criminal trespassing and obstructing identification, police said. Mecca was released on a citation and notified to appear in court on Jan. 15.
Waukesha County District Attorney Lesli Boese, whose office prosecuted Geyser in the 2014 stabbing case, expressed her hope that the state Department of Health Services, which has custody of Geyser, will file a petition to revoke the conditional release she had been granted.
“When we learned of Morgan’s escape over the weekend, it unfortunately validated the concerns we have raised from the very beginning,” Boese said. “We have been consistently and adamantly opposed to her release because her conduct has repeatedly demonstrated she poses a risk to the community.”
Boese added, “Her alleged actions this weekend only reinforce our position that a conditional release is unsafe and unacceptable.”
But attorney Anthony Cotton, who represented Geyser in the stabbing case, told ABC News correspondent Juju Chang on Monday that Geyser does not present a danger to her victim, the public, or to herself.
“The question becomes, going forward, is she still a risk to society? And I stand by every word of what I’ve said earlier. She is not a violent risk to others. I don’t believe that she is. And that’s why we found out that during her time out, she engaged in no violence whatsoever and had no weapons on her,” Cotton said.
Cotton said he hopes Geyser will be allowed to go back to a community group home.
“It will certainly present complications because we’re gonna have to go back to court eventually to try to get Morgan back into a community group home,” Cotton said. “So definitely this is not a good development and something that’s gonna have a negative impact on the work we do. It’s a setback.”
Geyser and another girl, Anissa Weier, were charged as adults and pleaded guilty to stabbing a classmate, Payton Leutner, 19 times in 2014, when they and the victim were 12 years old. Geyser and Weier, who were both prosecuted as adults, claimed they committed the attack on Leutner to appease “Slender Man,” a faceless, fictional internet-based character that garnered a cult-like following.
Geyser pleaded guilty to first-degree attempted intentional homicide and was sent to the Winnebago Mental Health Institute in 2018. Geyser was later found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect and was sentenced to up to 40 years in a psychiatric institution.
Weier was also found not guilty by mental disease or defect after pleading guilty to a lesser charge. She was sentenced to up to 25 years in a psychiatric institution. In 2021, at the age of 19, Weier was granted supervised release.
