Buena Park Man to Run New INS Anti-Bias Unit

Carlos Tellez Jr. of Buena Park, a 19-year veteran of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, has been appointed director of a new office that will investigate charges of job discrimination against immigrants, Harold Ezell, chief of the INS’ western region, announced Thursday.

Speaking to more than 200 INS supervisors at a conference in Newport Beach, Ezell said the new post, director of fair employment, represents part of the agency’s “proactive approach in the anti-discrimination area of employment.”

Tellez’s primary duty, beginning almost immediately, will be to investigate complaints of job discrimination as they relate to the Immigration Reform Act passed last year. The law, which grants amnesty to illegals living in this country since 1982, also will impose fines on employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens.

High-Visibility Post

The post is expected to be one of high visibility for the 49-year-old Tellez, who was approached Wednesday about taking the job. Tellez said he plans to make presentations throughout the INS’ western region, encompassing California, Hawaii, Arizona and Nevada, to groups interested in the new immigration law.

Former state Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso, also addressing the conference at the Newport Sheraton, expressed approval of the new post and said the INS should mesh its police duties with its responsibilities as a social service agency when the new law takes effect May 1.

In explaining the need for a fair-employment director, Ezell told conferees of complaints that one San Francisco employer is firing workers solely because they are “Hispanic- or foreign-looking in appearance.”

Place for Referrals

“If this is a problem, I want us to be set up to handle this,” Ezell said. “We need a place where the complaints and referrals can come.”

Tellez said investigating the San Francisco case will be his first assignment.

“We have to make sure discrimination doesn’t occur in the workplace,” Tellez said. “As long as both sides (employers and workers’ groups) are fair and don’t cut each other’s throat, that’s what it’s all about,” he said.

Since 1981, Tellez has been a deputy chief at the INS’ regional headquarters in San Pedro, overseeing 1,800 agents working along the Mexican border in California and Arizona.

Tellez joined the INS in 1968 as a patrol inspector in Chula Vista and transferred to a job as a criminal inspector in Los Angeles three years later. In 1978, he was promoted to supervise the criminal inspector division.

Before that, Tellez was a police officer for eight years in his native El Paso. He majored in criminal justice at Fullerton College.