Guilty Plea — Still On The Rolls?

Hand placing envelope into ballot box with flag background

A self-admitted illegal alien stayed on Maryland’s voter rolls for months after pleading guilty to citizenship fraud, exposing how slowly blue-state bureaucrats move when election integrity is on the line.

Story Snapshot

Illegal immigrant Ian Roberts falsely claimed to be a U.S. citizen and was registered to vote in Maryland twice.
He pleaded guilty to citizenship fraud, yet Maryland officials took months to remove him from the voter rolls.
State officials first hid his citizenship answer on public records, then backtracked after legal pressure.
House Republicans are demanding answers, while election insiders still downplay noncitizen voting risks.

How An Illegal Immigrant Ended Up Registered To Vote Twice

Ian Andre Roberts is a noncitizen from Guyana who entered the United States on a visa and later stayed illegally while rising into high-paid public school jobs, including running Iowa’s largest school district.^[8] He also became a registered voter in Maryland, not once but **twice**, according to registration records obtained by watchdog groups and cited in a congressional hearing.^[7] Those unredacted forms show Roberts checked the box claiming he was a United States citizen and signed under penalty of perjury, even though he was not a citizen.^[10]

Maryland officials have admitted that there is no record of Roberts actually casting a ballot in the state, but they also confirmed that their system relies heavily on what a person claims on the form.^[16] In other words, if someone lies and says “Yes, I am a citizen,” they are usually added to the rolls, and there is no automatic cross-check to catch the lie before the name goes live. That is exactly the kind of “honor system” conservatives have warned about for years.

Redacted Records, Slow Removal, And Stonewalling

When this case first came to light, Prince George’s County did not come clean. Instead, county election officials released a heavily redacted version of Roberts’ voter registration record that hid his answer to the question, “Are you a U.S. citizen?”^[2] Veteran requesters said they had never seen a state hide that specific checkbox before.^[4] Only after Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections and other watchdogs threatened litigation did the county turn over full, unredacted forms showing Roberts falsely claimed citizenship.^[3]

By then, Roberts’ immigration and criminal situation was no secret. He was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and later pleaded guilty in federal court to citizenship fraud for falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen, admitting under oath that he was not a citizen.^[3] Yet Washington Times reporting says that more than three months after that guilty plea, Roberts still appeared on Maryland’s voter rolls as an active voter, even as he faced prison and deportation for the very lie that got him registered.^[3] That slow response is why critics say it took roughly nine months from discovery to removal.

Maryland’s Defense: “He Never Voted” And Our Hands Are Tied

Maryland’s top election official, Jared DeMarinis, has offered a narrow defense. In a formal statement, he said that a review of public data showed no voting history for any individual named Ian Andre Roberts in Maryland, and stressed that being on the rolls does not mean someone actually voted.^[16] He also said Maryland usually removes noncitizens only when they self-report or when jury officials send a formal notice that the person is not a citizen.^[16] That means an arrest or news story alone does not automatically trigger removal.

DeMarinis repeated that theme in a letter to Congress, saying his office will not “disenfranchise” a voter based on “partial or unsubstantiated evidence,” and defending the system as relying on information the voter provides at registration.^[5] But critics point out the obvious problem: by the time Roberts pleaded guilty in federal court, his noncitizen status and false claim of citizenship were a matter of record, not a rumor. Yet the state still had no clear explanation for why he stayed on the rolls for months after that point.^[5]

Congress Steps In As Media Insist Noncitizen Voting Is “Rare”

The Roberts case has now reached Capitol Hill. House Committee on House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil and Subcommittee on Elections Chair Laurel Lee sent a formal demand for answers to the Maryland Board of Elections, asking how an illegal immigrant could register twice, why his records were redacted, and why it took so long to clean up the rolls.^[9] Fox News reports that Maryland’s responses dodged key questions, fueling even more scrutiny from Congressional Republicans.^[5]

🗳️ The Other Maryland Man finally removed from Maryland Voter Registration list.

9 months after it was discovered that a superintendent of a large school district was not only a noncitizen with a final deportation order, but also had been illicitly registered to vote in… pic.twitter.com/xqKTCskJQR

— Maryland Freedom Caucus (@MDFreedomCaucus) June 19, 2026

At the same time, many election officials and liberal groups keep repeating that noncitizen voting is “exceedingly rare” nationwide and that concerns are overblown.^[20] Studies do show that documented noncitizen voting is very low as a share of all votes cast, but even those reports admit some noncitizens do register, sometimes by “mistake.”^[20] For conservative voters, that misses the point. When the system lets even one illegal immigrant slip through, claim to be a citizen, and remain on the rolls for months after admitting fraud, trust is damaged. The Roberts saga shows how a process built on self-attestation and slow, lawyered-up bureaucracy can leave the door open—and then resist anyone who tries to look inside.