Leon Rodriguez
Leon Rodriguez
Leon Rodriguez is the Director of U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services.
He was appointed to the office by Barack Obama in 2014.
Rodriguez is Jewish and the son of immigrants from Cuba who came to the U.S. in 1961.
He received a B.A. from Brown University and a J.D. from Boston College Law School and now lives in Maryland.
He was the director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services from 2011 to 2014.
From 2010 to 2011 he served as chief of staff and deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Rodríguez was county attorney for Montgomery County, Maryland from 2007 to 2010.
He was a principal at Ober, Kaler, Grimes & Shriver in Washington, D.C. from 2001 to 2007.
He served in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania from 1997 to 2001, first as chief of the White Collar Crimes Section from 1998 to 1999 and then as first assistant U.S.
Attorney until his departure.
Rodríguez was a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division at DOJ from 1994 to 1997 and a senior assistant district attorney at the Kings County District Attorney’s Office in New York from 1988 to 1994.
Rodríguez is the son of immigrants who came from Cuba in 1961, and was raised speaking Spanish at home.
He was preceded in office by Alejandro Mallo who became.
deputy secretary of Homeland Security.
Mayorkas is also Cuban and Jewish.
All previous USCIS directors since the agency was established in 2003 have been of Cuban descent.