Thomas Schiltgen

Early this year, Thomas J. Schiltgen became director of the Los Angeles district office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. A 24-year veteran of the agency, Schiltgen takes over running the largest INS office in the nation at a critical time. As the head of a district that covers seven counties, he faces a complex situation that includes restoring public confidence in a district that came under scrutiny following a massive citizenship drive that led to allegations the INS failed to properly conduct background checks on thousands of would-be immigrants who were allowed to naturalize. More recently, the L.A. office has drawn fire for the long delays in processing nearly 400,000 citizenship applications in the pipeline. The agency’s poor service record was also the target of criticism earlier this year after the INS increased its fees, leading activists and immigrant-rights groups to accuse the agency of failing to do its job.

Adding to Schiltgen’s workload is the implementation of new immigration laws passed by Congress in 1996. In cities like Los Angeles, where INS policy is intertwined with the broader life, the impact of these policy changes is only now being felt. Laws requiring mandatory detention for immigrants who commit felonies and lengthening the list of crimes punishable by deportation have raised the agency’s status as warden. Detention of undocumented immigrants has led to a shortage of bed space at INS detention facilities. The agency is increasingly turning to private prisons to deal with the situation, touching off concern among civil-rights groups, who say that creates new problems as more and more immigrants get lost in the system. In Los Angeles, the INS houses inmates awaiting deportation proceedings in its San Pedro facility and contracts with local authorities, especially the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department.

While the agency is struggling to improve its tarnished image, it faces new hurdles caused by Hurricane Mitch, which devastated much of Central America. President Bill Clinton pledged nearly a billion dollars in aid to the region, yet many say what is needed is a broader plan to help Central Americans already living in this country whose immigration status has been in limbo for nearly a decade. Nearly half of those immigrants live in Los Angeles.

A native of St. Paul, Minn., Schiltgen joined the INS’s Chicago office in 1975, after graduating from the University of Minnesota with a degree in sociology. He has worked as a criminal investigator and a prosecutions liaison officer for the agency. He ran the St. Paul district office and later worked for the agency’s Thailand office. He returned to the U.S. in 1994, when he moved with his wife, Brenda, and their three children to San Francisco. He remained there, heading the INS district office, until late last year, when the 46-year-old Schiltgen was named director in Los Angeles.

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Question: It has been some months since you took over as director of the Los Angeles office, a district that has a lot of problems. People are anxious to see changes, especially in light of the fee increases and long delays. What has been your top priority?

Answer: The first order of business has been to focus on the naturalization backlog. This has been an issue that is at the forefront in most of the discussion of the INS. It’s certainly our biggest workload and probably the focus of 70% to 80% of the inquiries we get from all inquiry bases, including the public. This has been the first order of business, and I’m encouraged by what I’ve seen so far. There are now a lot of things in place to have a sustained effort of high production.

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Q: In the past, the agency has made similar pledges to reduce the backlog. What is different this time?

A: My response is I’ve used the words, “I’m encouraged and I see things in place that will lead to a sustained effort.” In the past, there were discussions about the fingerprinting process and how to ensure the quality of that process. Those discussions slowed us down because we had to wait and then implement the new quality-control process. We now have that in place and can focus on the backlog. And there have been so many things that have affected the backlog and increased the receipt of naturalization applications that were outside of our control. For example, welfare reform jumped up and hit us, causing an increase in applications. That isn’t even an INS issue, but we had to deal with it. But, again, I am cautious and realize we can’t promise anything we can’t deliver.

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Q: Have you set a quota for the number of cases you want inspectors to complete?

A: We feel that, given the resources that we have and we are receiving this year, we expect we are going to be able to complete somewhere around 22,000 to 23,000 naturalization cases each month.

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Q: One problem you face as a new director is the INS’s image. The public views the agency as bureaucratic and not user-friendly. The Times ran a story about how a decision by the INS led to a husband being deported even though his wife was a U.S. citizen. That mistake led to the separation of a family. What is your response to those who say the agency often makes mistakes and decisions that cause serious if not deadly consequences?

A: I think we have to do a better job communicating the work we do to the public. Having said that, I was very concerned about the article because there was so much that wasn’t relayed in it and it was unfair to the INS. What I saw in the story was an individual who had violated the immigration laws of this country. He went through the removal process, filed appeals and ultimately the courts said he was deportable. We enforced that, and what was really missing from the story was the part the INS played in helping him legally emigrate back to the United States. And yet, we were portrayed as doing everything purposefully to separate the family, when we were doing everything we were legally charged to do. So we are put in the position where very human situations exist and we will be seen as the big bad government, but we have to do our job.

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Q: Changes in immigration law have created problems for the agency in Los Angeles, especially in detention centers, where overcrowding is leading the agency to move immigrants around. Immigrant-rights groups say overcrowding results in immigrants being moved from jail to jail and not having access to legal representation. What is being done to ensure their access to an attorney?

A: First of all, I think we recognize the difficulty and go to significant lengths to facilitate that individuals get representation. We do have to move people around, and the circumstances of detention dictate we move them around. We don’t do it on purpose. We don’t do it to prevent them from getting legal representation. I think we go to great lengths to help them. But if when we contract out the sheriff tells us he can no longer keep this individual because of disciplinary problems, we have no choice but to move them. And this may cause a problem for them and their legal representative, but, nonetheless, we have to manage our bed space.

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Q: A human-rights group released a report critical of INS treatment of juveniles. It says the agency fails to protect them, putting them in juvenile halls that house kids who have committed serious crimes or detaining them indefinitely.

A: Some of the problems with juveniles is identifying who is a juvenile and who is not. You get into the 17- and 18-year-old range, and, oftentimes, it’s very difficult for us to identify who is a juvenile and who is not. The other thing is we often get some criticism for detaining juveniles when we do identify them. We have a responsibility to not just put them out on the street. We have very stringent procedures. As for where we house them, we contract out with the county for juveniles, and our people are housed separately inside.

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Q: So you are saying juveniles aren’t being put in with the general population at juvenile hall?

A: We may find, from time to time, some juveniles with serious criminal records that we may house in juvenile hall, but to the best of my knowledge we are not housing noncriminal juveniles with criminals.

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Q: The deportation of Central Americans resumed in March after the Clinton administration had issued a temporary stay in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch. These deportations are creating fear and confusion in the Central American community. What is the agency doing here in Los Angeles, home to one of the nation’s largest Central American communities, to alleviate the fear, especially among those who have had cases pending with the INS for the past decade, yet remain in immigration limbo?

A: I’m not sure we are really taking an active role. We aren’t going through a process of mass removals and deportations. There are cases pending from those who applied under temporary protective status, and those cases will be handled separately. Where we are seeing the removal from the United States are those people who are identified or we come across in our other priorities, such as people we find are involved in criminal activities or people involved in smuggling activities or the production of counterfeit documents. But we haven’t engaged in mass deportations or roundups.

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Q: Earlier this year, the INS announced it would increase the enforcement against employers who hired undocumented immigrants and smugglers, while diminishing the number of raids. Here in Los Angeles, however, the number of raids of industries traditionally known for hiring undocumented immigrants, such as the garment industry, was up last year. So what will the new policy mean here?

A: I think some of the policy was misinterpreted. I don’t expect there to be a significant reduction of our work-force enforcement. What we have with this new strategy, to put it in laymen terms, is we have a verbalization of where we have been going over the past five years. The element of the strategy is the same as what we have been doing all along. What is different is we are coming out with a strategy. And basically, we’ve been focusing on the employers and the smugglers, and on the manufacturing of counterfeit documents as it relates to illegal immigrants. We are still concerned with illegal immigrants. So it’s inappropriate to surmise from this new policy that we’ll not be arresting people, because we will; and we will be deporting people.

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Q: What are your priorities in terms of enforcement?

A: Balance is, of course, the most important thing. We don’t want to focus on any one area, but ensure we address every aspect of the enforcement issue. But having stated that, I think our No. 1 priority, and where the attention goes above all else, is the identification and removal of criminal aliens. We will continue to work with state institutions and, in some respects, in the local facilities to identify those individuals who are removable and committed a crime here in the United States.

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Q: What do you think about recommendations, including those made by a presidential commission on immigration, that the INS be split up into two organizations, one for enforcement issues and the other to provide service to immigrants?

A: There are discussions within the agency about a possible restructuring. But those are in the planning process, because there were some strong indications about a year ago of various components recommending the INS be split up. The agency is going through discussions as far as how that should be addressed. But I think the agency should not be split up. I feel very strongly it is only with a single agency that we are able to provide a balanced immigration product to the public. There are so many things critical to both the enforcement work and the benefits work that we do that are shared. Records, for instance, computer data, things that on a practical level would be very difficult to do if the agency were split up. For example, what would happen to the files on people? If the INS were to be split up, I would be concerned about where the records would go.

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Q: The Los Angeles office came under heavy scrutiny following the citizenship drive during the last presidential election. There were allegations that, due to weakened enforcement of guidelines, some immigrants who didn’t qualify were allowed to naturalize. What are you doing to restore the image and the confidence in the Los Angeles District office, especially as it pertains to the citizenship process?

A: We certainly went through some very difficult times over the last few years with regard to the naturalization issue and have worked through new stringent naturalization quality procedures. And we have successfully implemented those. Now we are concentrating on making sure we are able to proceed with a significant quantity of work, because I think when we talk about customer service and naturalization we have to talk about both the quality of the work we do and the quantity of the work we do. We really have been, over the past two years, in a zero-tolerance environment and it just isn’t good customer service for us to produce one case a month. That just doesn’t fit in with our responsibility to the public.