Speaker

Don Monica has been the Division Chief for Adjudications since April 2019. He manages a staff of subject matter experts at USCIS Headquarters who develop operational guidance to implement USCIS policy and assure adjudicative consistency across the five Service Centers.Prior to his current position, Mr. Monica spent four years as the Director of the USCIS Asia-Pacific District, where he had oversight of offices in Bangkok, Beijing, Guangzhou, Manila, New Delhi and Seoul. These offices adjudicated naturalization applications for United States military members and their spouses, refugee resettlement applications and family-based immigrant petitions.

Mr. Monica began his government service in 1980 with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and served in numerous adjudicative and enforcement positions. His duty stations included domestic postings in Champlain (NY), Niagara Falls, Buffalo, Philadelphia and Miami. Outside the United States, he served with INS in Toronto, Montreal, Nairobi and Moscow.

When INS was abolished 2003, Mr. Monica was posted to Chicago as the USCIS District Director and later served as a District Director in Philadelphia and Atlanta. In 2008 he transferred to Orlando as the Southeast Regional Director. He moved to the Field Operations Directorate at USCIS Headquarters in 2010, first as Deputy Associate Director and later as Associate Director, with management responsibility for 4,500 staff at over 100 domestic locations throughout the United States.

Mr. Monica is a native of Cleveland and graduated from Cleveland State University. He also holds an M.A. from the University of St. Michael’s College in Toronto, Canada.