Moschorak Is Named Director of INS District : Immigration: The choice is likely to be popular among agency workers, but some activists criticize his record on keeping families together.

Robert M. Moschorak, a 24-year veteran of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, was appointed Tuesday as the agency’s Los Angeles district director.

The new director was Harold Ezell’s top aide for most of his sometimes controversial tenure as INS head man in the western United States.

The appointment was made by INS Commissioner Gene McNary, who called Moschorak, 49, a “top-grade manager with a wealth of experience.”

“His understanding of the many challenges of managing a district office will serve him well in this significant INS operation,” McNary said in a statement issued in Washington.

Moschorak, who began his INS career in 1965 as a Border Patrol agent in Arizona, succeeds Ernest Gustafson, who retired in September.

Moschorak, who speaks Spanish, has been acting Los Angeles director since Nov. 1.

The appointment figures to be popular among many INS bureaucrats.

When Ezell retired last summer after six years in office, INS workers at the agency’s regional headquarters in Laguna Niguel rallied around the low-key Moschorak, then the associate regional commissioner, and called for his selection as Ezell’s replacement.

Eventually, Ben Davidian, chairman of the California Agriculture Labor Relations Board, was named to replace Ezell.

Moschorak, who was acting regional commissioner until Davidian was named to the post, was overjoyed at his appointment Tuesday.

“I’m looking forward to the tremendous challenge of heading this office,” he said.

Many INS workers, as well as its critics, say that, after the regional commissionership, the post of Los Angeles district director is the most important in the agency.

Moschorak will oversee a sprawling operation that covers seven of Southern California’s most populous counties--Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo. In that area, the district’s 1,400 employees--nearly a third of all INS employees in the four-state western region--process requests for visas and U.S. citizenship and administer the massive amnesty program.

In Greater Los Angeles, an estimated 1.3 million illegal immigrants applied for legalization under the amnesty program, which extends legal resident status to aliens who lived in this country before Jan. 1, 1982. Nationwide, about 3 million aliens applied.

In fact, the post is considered so important that some immigrant advocates criticized McNary and Davidian in recent weeks for taking too long in naming Gustafson’s replacement.

Once news of Tuesday’s appointment broke, many of the advocates criticized it, contending that Moschorak has ignored humanitarian pleas in deporting aliens during his brief time as acting director.

“Oh, my God!” said Los Angeles attorney Antonio Rodriguez. “I have had several unpleasant experiences in cases specifically taken to him. So far, he’s refused to exercise his position in a responsible and humanitarian manner.”

Linda Mitchell, a spokeswoman for the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights of Los Angeles, said: “Even though McNary has set a new ‘family-fairness policy,’ Moschorak has refused to use his authority to keep families together.”

McNary last month issued a liberalized policy allowing close relatives of amnesty applicants to remain temporarily in this country. But it has come under attack by critics who contend the policy’s application varies from city to city around the country.

Moschorak and his wife, Maria Teresa, have two grown children and live in Anaheim.