After ‘Difficult’ Year, INS Chief Quitting Job

James Ziglar, the embattled chief of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said Friday that he would leave his job by the end of the year, ending a short tenure at what is widely considered one of the government’s worst run agencies.

The INS has long been seen as inadequate in its job as enforcer of the nation’s immigration laws. Ziglar, a financial services lawyer and boyhood friend of Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), had no background in immigration law when he began the job last August. But he was expected to repair relations between the agency and lawmakers.

Instead, the agency has angered many lawmakers since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which gave border and immigration control a more urgent national security role. In one high-profile failure that angered even President Bush, an INS contractor sent out visa approvals for two of the Sept. 11 hijackers--six months after the attacks.

“He’s a nice guy ... but he is completely and totally incapable of running an agency of this magnitude,” Rep. Thomas G. Tancredo (R-Colo.) said of Ziglar.

“They should have fired him a long time ago. We’re absolutely better off from this. I’d have been willing to kick in for a golden parachute if he would have left earlier,” Tancredo said, referring to the buyout plans sometimes given to corporate executives.

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said Ziglar had served the administration “admirably during a very important time under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. We appreciate his commitment and service to the country.” The INS is part of the Justice Department.

Ziglar wrote to Bush on Thursday that he had set no date for his departure.

He offered to stay on until Congress and the president approve legislation creating a Department of Homeland Security, which is expected to include some or all of the INS’ 34,000 employees.

Ziglar told Bush that, although he could not have imagined the “dramatic changes” that the Sept. 11 attacks thrust on the INS, “I have done my best to continue making progress toward the goals of restructuring the agency and reducing backlogs while responding to the call to arms in the war on terrorism.

“I believe that the record will indicate that we have made substantial progress toward these goals.”

Critics have said the agency is plagued by low morale, high attrition and an inability to perform basic functions. As an example, said Tancredo, who favors tougher enforcement of immigration laws, the INS has been unable to find more than 300,000 people who have been ordered by immigration law judges to be deported for committing serious crimes.

The agency has also been torn by two competing missions: to help foreigners navigate the admission and naturalization processes, and to police borders and remove illegal immigrants.

Ziglar, a self-described libertarian, favored the agency’s welcoming roles more than its policing roles, a stance that became untenable after Sept. 11, several observers of the INS said.

“I suspect it was becoming increasingly difficult for a pro-immigration Republican to feel that he has a place at the table within this administration, which is increasingly perceived by immigrants as hostile to hard-working, law-abiding newcomers,” said Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, which advocates policies that welcome immigrants.

Ziglar’s reported discomfort with his law enforcement role “would have been problematic in ordinary times. But with the INS as one of the lead agencies in homeland security, it became deeply problematic,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors tighter immigration laws.

Krikorian and Kelley said Ziglar was quick after Sept. 11 to say repeatedly that immigrants should not be equated with terrorists. But where Kelley said those comments set the proper tone, Krikorian said they showed that Ziglar did not grasp “that the terrorist assault on the U.S. has to be met in part through immigration policies.”

Hints that Ziglar was out of step with the administration, said Kelley, included the fact that Ashcroft, and not Ziglar, had made several recent announcements of tougher immigration policies.

They included a July announcement that the INS would pursue fines, jail or deportation against immigrants and foreign visitors who failed to notify the government within 10 days of a change of address. The department has also said it will require that tens of thousands of foreign visitors be fingerprinted and photographed.

In April, the House voted, with White House approval, to break the INS into separate agencies for border enforcement and new citizenship.

Since then, the Bush administration has proposed creating the massive homeland security agency. The House, Senate and White House disagree on which INS functions should be folded into the new agency and how they should be organized within that agency.

Ziglar, a Mississippi native, is a lawyer with experience in the investment banking industry, including two stints as a managing director at PaineWebber Inc. He also held a senior job at the Interior Department, as well as several other government jobs.

In 1998, he became sergeant at arms of the Senate, serving as chief security official and as an administrative officer for the chamber. He was appointed by Bush to the INS job, winning Senate confirmation in July 2001. Ziglar said he plans to return to the private sector.