“Due diligence” is an expectation that someone responsible for making an important decision research all relevant facts, risks, and legal obligations prior to making that decision. It is routine in the economic and legal fields, where exercising due diligence before committing to a contract or financial obligation is a normal expectation. It is certainly a fiduciary expectation: Somebody acting on behalf of someone else’s interests or assets is expected to examine a situation carefully prior to committing to it. A fiduciary who does not undertake a due diligence review can be held liable for dereliction of duty by exposing to undue risk the party for whom he is working.

Somebody in Des Moines was derelict in due diligence.

Last month, ICE arrested Ian Roberts, superintendent of schools in Iowa’s capital city, as an illegal alien from Guyana. His detention generated the usual screed from anti-ICE forces in Democratic Des Moines, one of the few blue outposts in increasingly Republican Iowa. The kneejerk reaction of the school board, led by Jackie Norris (former chief-of-staff to Michelle Obama, now running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senator from Iowa), was to double down in defense of the next persecuted immigrant. The media repeated those claims.

Now, however, the story coming out (see here) is that the administration’s arrest was not so off-target. Roberts had no work authorization. Because he had no legal status in the United States, he was not authorized to have the loaded handgun he had on his car seat when he sought to flee ICE in September. He’s fudged from what university he supposedly obtained his doctorate. Somebody with his name “and other identifiers” is a registered voter in Maryland, though of course we “know” illegals don’t vote in the United States. He had a 1996 arrest in New York City on drug charges. He previously claimed U.S. citizenship when he got a job in a Pennsylvania school system. Even public records of his birth year contain three year discrepancies.

But he got hired, at a base six-figure salary of $286,000. And when he was arrested, the initial impulse was to close ranks around him. He brought “diversity” to Des Moines and encouraged “diversity” in its student body. As for all the rest, well, Ralph Kramden would have called it “a mere bag of shells!”

So, was his arrest the persecution of another “migrant?” An offense of his “dignity?” Maybe even racially motivated? Or, do we admit the man was a fraud who gamed the lax American system? Having no refuge left to defend their decision, Board President Norris wants to blame the headhunter firm hired to recruit Roberts. The firm will likely be sued after no doubt collecting some nice fees for their “work.”

Now, allow me to compare my experience. In the past two months, I’ve had two encounters with schools. I am teaching a course at a university. In order to be hired, I had to go to the Human Resources office and present my original U.S. passport — no copies — to prove who I am and my work authorization. There’s nothing extraordinary about that: Every American employer is obligated to complete an I-9 form certifying an employee can legally work in the United States. Completion of the I-9 requires noting the numbers of the document(s) the applicant presents to prove who he is and that he can work in America. (A U.S. passport does both). Nor is it “discriminatory” that, if you are hiring an applicant who is foreign-born, you take pains to ensure work authorization lest non-Americans be displacing American employees. Every employer has a legal obligation to complete an I-9 form for every worker.

Where was Roberts?

I also decided to refresh my credentials to be a substitute teacher in my local school district. I likewise had to go through the I-9 process with them, but they had an additional step: If I was going to work in a Virginia public school — even as a substitute — I had to be fingerprinted, to be verified against a criminal database.

Did they do that with Dr. Roberts?

If they did that with me for one course and an occasional substitute gig, why wasn’t it done for the district superintendent pulling in almost $300K per annum? It didn’t take a major board decision or great scrutiny by the headhunters. The I-9 process is a routine hiring procedure that is commonly executed by a trusted junior-to-middle level permanent employee of the organization. Except, apparently, in Des Moines. Somebody was derelict in his due diligence.

A typical pro-immigrant retort to what happened is that employers are derelict and get away with it because “Republicans” won’t punish them for hiring cheap labor. There was nothing cheap about Ian Roberts but I’m certainly willing to put teeth into enforcement. Current fines are relatively moderate. I’d be willing to see a fine of twice the projected salary or annual wages of a prospective employee for failure to complete the I-9 process properly. I’d bet a $572,000 fine would have galvanized the Des Moines district’s due diligence.

I won’t even get into other justice issues here, e.g., the claim that we need to indulge illegal immigration because illegals “do the jobs Americans won’t do.” I can imagine a fair number of Americans — some even with less dubious backgrounds — who’d work for $286,000/year. And if this is the kind of due diligence demonstrated in identifying senior policymakers for our public schools, well, are you wondering why many question the injustice of keeping kids down on the public-school plantation at the expense of parental educational choice?

In light of Roberts’s decades-long abuse of the immigration system, let’s not bewail the administration’s demands about proving legal migrant status, because the I-9 employment eligibility verification process has been on the books for 39 years (since November 1986). One thing I did notice — after the initial flurry of opposition to Roberts’s arrest — is that since ICE’s charges against him appear increasingly and cumulatively to be true, no one has yet said “sorry” to the President.