Black Agents Charge INS With Job Bias : Workplace: The 19 Los Angeles officers are asking an administrative law judge to certify their class-action complaint. They want back pay and reform throughout the troubled agency.

Nineteen African-American immigration agents based in Los Angeles are leading a national class-action complaint against the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service alleging a pervasive pattern and practice of discrimination.

The charges, authorities say, have reverberated in the Justice Department and could have far-reaching implications for the troubled INS, which has been plagued by allegations of mismanagement and misconduct.

This week, the agents are requesting that an administrative law judge certify their complaint, initially filed last fall, as a national class-action complaint on behalf of all of the agency’s nearly 2,000 African-American employees.

The agents are seeking systemwide reform and back pay for promotions that they say have been unfairly denied. They allege that they have been denied promotions, training and other benefits and have suffered reprisals because of their efforts to seek redress.

“The INS condones racism and prejudice, from headquarters in Washington right down the chain of command,” said John J. Washington, a former Los Angeles-based agent who is the designated spokesman for the 19.

The agents’ complaint is pending before the INS’ Equal Employment Opportunity branch. The plaintiffs are all special agents who investigate matters including fraud, immigrant-smuggling and immigrant gangs. However, the agents contend that the discrimination pervades the entire INS structure, including other law enforcement branches, inspection, detention and deportation divisions.

The case has become a rallying point for African-American immigration employees nationwide who allege similar instances of discrimination, prompting Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) to call for reforms. The influential congressman noted that not a single African-American occupies any of more than 100 top-level INS slots, including powerful district director and chief Border Patrol agent posts.

“I am deeply troubled at the apparent exclusion of African-Americans from these key INS positions,” Conyers, chairman of the Government Operations Committee, wrote in a letter to the Justice Department.

Washington-based officers have even formed a group called Concerned African-Americans Within the Immigration and Naturalization Service and publicly called on Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to remedy discriminatory practices throughout the agency.

Last month, acting Immigration Commissioner Chris Sale appointed a task force to investigate the lack of African-Americans in supervisory ranks and the virtual absence of blacks from the agency’s upper command structure. The INS, with a budget of $1.5 billion, enforces immigration laws and also assists people seeking citizenship and other benefits.

“Whether real or perceived, I am deeply concerned about these allegations,” Sale said in an internal memorandum. “My review of work force representation statistics gives me concern.”

Indeed, INS data shows that the agency’s 1,935 African-American employees--while constituting 11.7% of the entire 16,446-worker payroll--occupy only 5.8 % of the best-paying, management grade positions. Non-Latino whites, who make up 58% of the overall work force, account for 81.8% of those higher-salaried slots, the figures show. Latinos, representing slightly more than 25% of the total INS work force, occupy 10.4% of high-salary ranks, according to agency figures.

Justice Department officials are also eager to avoid an embarrassing discrimination case, especially in light of successful bias challenges brought against the FBI by African-American and Latino agents. A landmark class-action lawsuit by Latino FBI agents resulted in promotions, back pay and other benefits for affected officers. In an agreement reached last year, 300 African-American FBI agents who threatened a lawsuit won promotions, training and other benefits. The Justice Department includes the INS and responsibility for enforcement of civil rights laws under its broad umbrella.

“The attorney general is committed to ensuring that the INS work force reflects a diversity of racial and ethnic groups,” M. Faith Burton, acting assistant attorney general, wrote in a letter to Conyers this month.

African-American workers at the INS contend that they are ghettoized in comparatively low-paying branches--especially detention and deportation--and largely excluded from career-track positions, such as special agent and Border Patrol officer, that have long been training grounds for the INS’s upper echelons.

Although the Los Angeles agents’ complaint centers on issues of blunted career advancement, some Los Angeles officers also allege that they have been subjected to racial harassment.

Turned down for a post as a firearms instructor last year, one agent, Chris Carter, said a white supervisor later explained to him that there was no “quota for blacks.”

Another agent, Melanie Thomas, says she was degraded in a racially loaded and sexually explicit joke circulated among male colleagues last summer.

The accusations of disparate treatment illustrate the difficulties faced by many institutions seeking to diversify the ranks of upper management.

As in other entrenched organizations, a tightknit group of longtime associates--mostly non-Latino white men--has long dominated the immigration bureaucracy, grooming favored subordinates for promotions and plum assignments, according to white and black agents.

“The good old boy network is racist as well as discriminatory,” said James Humble-Sanchez, a special agent in Los Angeles who is president of Local 505 of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents INS agents but is not directly involved in the class-action complaint. “When it’s time to have lunch, you don’t see top management grabbing black agents and taking them to lunch. You don’t see them playing golf together on weekends.”

Within six months, officials said, the INS task force investigating employment practices is expected to develop a report and plan of action designed to correct employment inequities and ensure parity.

However, many African-American agents, accusing the INS of attempting to defer criticism, have called for appointment of an investigative body outside of the service’s ranks.

David L. Ross, a Los Angeles attorney representing the complaining agents, called the service task force a whitewash and advised his clients to refrain from talking to its representatives.

The agents say that if the INS fails to take remedial action, a federal class-action lawsuit--similar to the successful action filed by the Latino agents against the FBI--would probably be the next step.

Regardless of the legal maneuverings, resentment among black agents is likely to linger.

“Why do my white managers neglect me when it comes to training, career progression . . . awards and promotions?” Norris Potter, the lead plaintiff in the Los Angeles case, asked in his complaint. “What is the cause and meaning of their fear toward me? The answer is simple. It’s because I’m black.”

Potter, who, like fellow agents, declined extensive comment on the matter, saying he feared retribution, contends that he has been skipped for promotions more than half a dozen times in his nearly seven-year career.

According to Potter, his persistent complaints triggered vicious retaliation--racially and sexually offensive letters addressed to his wife at home.

“You deserve better than that mentally deranged liar,” the first letter, sent in 1991, told Potter’s wife. “He is a danger to the Immigration Service and to his family!”

The missives’ details about his job, Potter said, leave no doubt that the anonymous author or authors work with him at the agency.

In addition to a lack of advancement opportunities, the Los Angeles-based agents allege that white officers receive preferential treatment in the assignment of tasks such as investigating fraud and other status jobs within the agency. African-American agents say they are disproportionately assigned to more mundane duties, such as arranging for the repatriation of illegal immigrants held in jails and prisons.

“The agents want to be assigned to more diverse cases,” said Washington, the former Los Angeles-based agent who is also a plaintiff in the case. “When we try to rise, they try to suppress us.”

Moreover, African-American agents say managers impose harsher standards on them for alleged mistakes and disciplinary lapses.

“For the white agents, it’s always ‘learn as you go,’ ” said Washington, a nearly 15-year INS investigator who says he was passed over for promotion three times despite consistently outstanding personnel appraisals. “African-Americans don’t have that luxury.”

Since filing their complaint last fall, African-American agents in Los Angeles have been shunned by supervisors, forced to write lengthy memos to justify actions and otherwise subjected to retaliation, according to Washington, the spokesman. A tense atmosphere prevails in the Los Angeles investigative branch of the INS, agents said, greatly hindering productivity.

“The tensions and the polarizations are almost as black and white as the skin color of the agents themselves,” said Humble-Sanchez, the union local president.

Rico Cabrera, INS designated spokesman in Los Angeles, declined comment.

The allegations have also accentuated the turmoil that has embroiled the INS operation in Los Angeles. The district office, among the nation’s busiest, covers a seven-county expanse that is home to one of the nation’s largest immigrant populations. The district employs more than 1,000 workers.

The district director, Robert M. Moschorak, abruptly announced his retirement last month amid much-discussed charges that he assaulted a female subordinate who had reported him for misconduct in allegedly expediting his wife’s citizenship application. Moschorak denied any wrongdoing. Arthur Alvarez, former INS port director at Los Angeles International Airport, was reassigned late last year after allegations arose that he sexually harassed female subordinates. An interim district director, Clifton J. Rogers, is at the helm in Los Angeles.