A Veteran Departs From the INS

In almost three decades with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Richard K. Rogers has policed the borders with Mexico and Canada, worked to deport Nazi war criminals and helped break up smuggling rings.

But his biggest challenge was his final one: heading the INS’ huge Los Angeles office, the agency’s largest and, many agree, its most difficult to handle, encompassing a seven-county region the size of Kentucky.

Southern California is the nation’s new immigrant capital, and it is here that immigration is a hot social and political issue.

Virtually invisible across huge swaths of the nation, the INS lands frequently in Southland headlines, often as the target of criticism.

“There’s always some issue in L.A.,” Rogers, 51, said in an interview.

The son of an immigration inspector and the INS’ top man here since March 1994, Rogers retired last week from the $120,000-a-year post. His wife, Elizabeth, who works for the U.S. Postal Service, is being transferred to Washington, and he retired, in part, to accompany her.

On Rogers’ watch, the INS’ Los Angeles district not only experienced unparalleled growth in resources, but also faced unprecedented scrutiny. The office was accused of failing to move swiftly against an El Monte sweatshop where workers were kept like slaves. It has been blamed for long delays in processing citizenship applications.

“Dick’s is the toughest job in Southern California,” said Richard E. Drooyan, chief assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, during one of many testimonials offered at a retirement luncheon Friday.

Rogers, a Boston native who was reared in northern Maine, said one of his goals was to open up an agency that has long been shielded from public view--and that is sometimes depicted as a heartless divider of families.

In general, he got good marks for accessibility. When first appointed district director, he reached out to community groups.

And with each controversy, he defended his agency publicly.

“He wasn’t a person to hide behind his desk and his authority,” said Greg Simons, who heads citizenship programs for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, a group often at odds with the INS.

That said, some immigrant activists complain that they could not get direct access to Rogers. Instead, they said, they were directed to subordinates. Moreover, both INS staff and outside observers say Rogers, like many government officials, was a cautious bureaucrat, wary of departing from directives from Washington.

“My sense is that Dick Rogers was a good person, had good ethics, was a man of integrity--but he was not one who would push for one particular policy,” said Juan Jose Gutierrez, executive director of One Stop Immigration, an Eastside social services agency. “He played by the book.”

Gutierrez and many other activists are hoping that Rogers’ successor as director will be more of an advocate for the region’s huge immigrant population--and more willing to go to bat against Washington.

“I’d like to see someone who was a little more hands-on, a little more likely to make it clear to the public that the INS is there, first and foremost, to provide a good service,” Gutierrez said.

Agency officials say they have just begun looking for a new district director.

When Rogers arrived in Los Angeles, he faced a major internal challenge: A 1993 agency review had found deep divisions, especially among black, Latino and white investigators. Many credit Rogers with helping to defuse the tensions.

He faced enormous logistical challenges too.

A national consensus against illegal immigration has prompted Congress to more than double INS funding in the last five years. A record surge of citizenship applicants overwhelmed the capacity to process them. Landmark laws passed in 1996 speeded expulsion procedures and contributed to record numbers of deportations.

The Los Angeles district now has a budget of more than $60 million and almost 2,000 employees--including inspectors, criminal investigators, detention and deportation officers and clerks. Only four years ago, the office here employed 900 people.

Rogers, like many top-level INS managers, began in law enforcement. The former Navy air crewman started working in 1969 as a Border Patrol agent in San Diego. He was soon promoted to criminal investigator in Los Angeles.

Asked his major accomplishment, Rogers cited his pivotal role in the Clinton administration’s Citizenship USA initiative. That campaign, in 1995 and 1996, resulted in the swearing in of more than 1 million new citizens nationwide. One quarter came from the Los Angeles district.

The program virtually ground to a halt once Republican lawmakers in Washington charged that lax security checks had allowed thousands of ineligible criminals to become citizens. Rogers insists that those charges were greatly exaggerated.

“I regret that, for every single person who became a citizen during that period,” he said, “the emphasis on criminals tainted the experience.”