The FBI raided the headquarters of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest school district in the US, as well as the home of Alberto Carvalho, the district’s superintendent, federal officials confirmed on Wednesday.
An unnamed source familiar with the investigation told the Associated Press that authorities served warrants that were part of an “ongoing investigation.”
The Los Angeles Unified School District said in a statement that it was “informed of law enforcement activity” at its headquarters and at Carvalho’s home.
“The district is cooperating with the investigation, and we do not have further information at this time.”
According to Nick Sortor, the school district “recently ‘misplaced’ $76 million in taxpayer funds, falsified student attendance records.”
He also notes, “Carvalho was once an ILLEGAL ALIEN, and he’s been allowing kids out of schools to take over the streets at anti-ICE events.”
As an aside, last year, after Homeland Security Investigations agents were turned away from two Los Angeles elementary schools where they said they were conducting welfare checks on undocumented students, Mr. Carvalho condemned their actions at a news conference that drew national attention.
Carvalho began his life in the United States as a student who overstayed his visa. He worked in restaurants, farms, and construction sites, and even fell into homelessness. After about two years, he said, he secured a student visa and proper documentation and eventually became a physics teacher. He is now a U.S. citizen.
Miami to LA Raided
Before working in LA, he worked in Miami. A location in Miami where Carvalho previously worked was also raided as part of the probe, the New York Post reported.
The School Superintendents Association named Carvalho their Superintendent of the Year in 2014 when he was the head of the Miami school district, the nation’s fourth-largest. He took the top job in Los Angeles in 2022.
The Miami district’s inspector general investigated a nonprofit started by Carvalho for soliciting a donation from a company that created a failed online learning platform. The investigation found no ‘actual’ wrongdoing, the Miami Herald reported in 2021, but the inspector general said the donation created an appearance of impropriety and should be returned.
Federal prosecutors had been looking into AllHere, a tech start-up that had secured a $6 million contract with the Los Angeles school district for an AI chatbot, but filed for bankruptcy in 2024. It is unclear if the F.B.I. searches on Wednesday were related to the AllHere investigation.
Last October, the Des Moines school chief, Ian Roberts, was arrested. He was an illegal alien who also possessed firearms.
