Black Agents’ Class-Action Bias Complaint Against INS OKd : Discrimination: The immigration agency’s African American employees claim they were passed over for promotions and kept in second-rate jobs.

In a case that originated with Los Angeles-based agents, a judge has ruled that more than 500 African American officers of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service may proceed with a national class-action complaint alleging that the agency discriminated against them.

The administrative ruling clears the path for what officials and attorneys describe as probably the largest-ever case charging a federal agency with discrimination against its employees.

The INS complaint--which dramatizes the paucity of African Americans in the upper echelons of federal law enforcement--is believed to involve more officers than two previous high-profile cases against the Federal Bureau of Investigation by African American and Latino agents.

The INS, like the FBI, is part of the Justice Department, whose wide-ranging responsibilities include enforcement of civil rights laws banning discrimination. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno is said to be eager to dispose of the embarrassing INS bias complaint, but settlement discussions have made little headway.

For years, black INS officers contend, they have been repeatedly passed over for promotions, ghettoized in second-rate jobs and subjected to a “racially hostile” work environment, including derogatory comments and unequal imposition of discipline. The Los Angeles agents who spearheaded the complaint also alleged that they suffered retribution--including, in one case, offensive letters mailed to an agent’s home.

In a ruling delivered to attorneys Feb. 18, administrative law Judge Jane Goodman, who sits in Los Angeles, certified the case as a national class action covering all black officers in the INS, including others who have left the service. That action expanded the matter well beyond the initial group of INS criminal investigators. The judge took no position on the agents’ assertion of institutional bias, which may be dealt with at a later hearing.

Goodman ruled on behalf of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, an independent federal body that investigates bias allegations. The black agents’ complaint is pending before the EEOC.

The officers are seeking unspecified amounts of back pay and damages--possibly exceeding $50 million, according to their attorney--along with promotions, reassignments and a wide-ranging overhaul of INS hiring, training and staff development policies. The discrimination allegations date back to 1980.

Immigration officials have not commented on whether there is discrimination in their ranks. But authorities have acknowledged disparities in the posting of African Americans to upper-level positions.

In a report released in June, an INS task force found “significant underrepresentation” of blacks in supervisory and managerial slots. The report cited a “good old boy system” that benefited white males, and a perception of racism, nepotism and preferential treatment. Racial divisions had sparked a “hostile and volatile” environment in the Los Angeles district INS office, the report concluded.

Since then, the INS named African Americans to several high-level managerial slots--including chief of the asylum office in New York and deputy Border Patrol positions in El Paso and Miami.

But John J. Washington, a senior special agent in Los Angeles who is spokesman for the black immigration officers alleging discrimination, called those promotions “window dressing” designed to disguise deeply ingrained inequities.

He and David L. Ross, the Los Angeles attorney who represents the agents, urged the government to reform INS personnel procedures and act to settle the case.

Immigration officials said they were reviewing the judge’s ruling, but declined to comment on its merits or their intentions. The agency has tried to diversify its management structure and improve response to discrimination complaints, said Duke Austin, an INS spokesman.

Yet he acknowledged that there are only 44 African American Border Patrol agents--including only three supervisors--among the 4,000 officers nationwide. Those numbers are especially significant because the Border Patrol is considered a career-building path within the INS.

In the agency, African Americans represent more than 11% of its 17,000 full-time workers, but they occupy fewer than 6% of the best-paying positions.

The INS bias case began in late 1992, when 19 Los Angeles-based criminal investigators filed the initial complaint. But the judge’s decision greatly expands the number of job categories covered.

Goodman ruled that the complaint covered the INS’ entire national uniformed black “officer corps”--encompassing up to 560 criminal investigators, Border Patrol agents, inspectors, detention guards, deportation officers and examiners.

In addition, the judge ruled, an unknown number of former INS workers may have also suffered from bias. Those former employees, combined with clerical and other lower-level black INS workers wrongly denied promotions into the officer corps or dissuaded from applying, could add several hundred more plaintiffs, according to Ross, the officers’ attorney.

INS officials have 30 days to respond.

If the service does not contest the judge’s ruling, the stage would be set for an administrative hearing later this year on the merits of the discrimination claim.