Border inspectors, their job description says, protect the United States against terrorists, drug smugglers, criminals, impostors and others trying to enter the country illegally.
But not against drunken drivers.
In a policy gap that comes as a surprise even to some Arizona police officials, neither Immigration and Naturalization Service officers nor U.S. Customs agents have clear authority to detain impaired drivers, adult or underage.
It's a loophole that imperils highways near the Mexican border, and one that an Arizona congressman wants to close.
"It is ridiculous that we enforce proper road safety within the United States but we do nothing to prevent drunk driving when people enter the country," said Rep. Jeff Flake, a Republican who represents mainly the southeast Valley.
Flake has introduced a bill called the Sober Borders Act that would make it a federal offense for a driver to exceed the state's intoxication limits at a border crossing.
The act, the revival of a bill sponsored two years ago by Flake's predecessor, Matt Salmon, would allow INS or Customs officers to detain impaired drivers, give blood-alcohol tests and impound vehicles if necessary.
"It's not saying to officers, 'You've got to administer a Breathalyzer for every car,' or anything like that," Flake said. "But they can't do it at all now, and this allows them to do it."
The dangers arise as revelers, often underage, return from a night of drinking in Mexico, where the legal age for alcohol consumption is 18.
Several fatal car crashes in Arizona have been blamed on under-21 drinkers coming home from Mexico.
In California, underage drivers returning from binges in Tijuana have been charged in the deaths of two California highway patrol officers during the past year. Also, a 33-year-old man returning from Mexico with a blood-alcohol level of 0.15 percent, nearly twice the limit at which one is presumed drunk, is accused of mowing down a highway worker in November, killing him instantly.
INS and Customs officials said they would like to aid efforts to cut down on drunken driving but that policing it would require additional personnel, training and equipment.
"We're already responsible for enforcing 400 different laws for 40 different (federal) agencies," said Max Pitzer, port director at San Luis, about 20 miles south of Yuma. "We're spread pretty thin."
Department of Public Safety spokesman Steve Volden said not all officers, especially those who do not work border areas, have been aware of the DUI enforcement gap.
But in Tucson, DPS Sgt. Ed Slechta, president of the multiagency Southern Arizona DUI Task Force, said border-area authorities recognize the longstanding, if not widely publicized, omission.
"This is not just an Arizona problem," Slechta emphasized. "It's along the entire border, from California through Texas."
Pitzer and Russell Ahr, special assistant in the Phoenix office of the INS, said border inspectors usually try to alert municipal, county or state police if a driver is obviously inebriated. The Border Patrol also might keep an impaired driver at a highway checkpoint until a Highway Patrol officer arrives, Ahr said.
The system is informal at best and ineffective if an officer is unable to respond quickly, authorities said.
Although anyone could make a citizen's arrest, border officers are legally liable if they detain someone inappropriately, Flake said.
On the other hand, spokesmen for the enforcement agencies said that under the current laws, inspectors also could face liability for not stopping an obviously impaired driver who goes on to cause a crash under the current laws.
Three underage drinkers have lost their lives in separate car crashes in the past three years on the stretch of Interstate 19 between Nogales and Tucson, Slechta said.
He recalled that numerous cases of underage drinking turned up when the DUI task force monitored pedestrian crossings and some traffic at Nogales in the spring of 2000.
Over two weekends, officers issued 110 citations for such things as public drunkenness, including four DUIs, to people under 21 who had been drinking, Slechta said.
"We had one kid so out of it we had to call an ambulance and send him to the hospital. He was really in bad shape and could have died of alcohol poisoning."
Slechta said he would welcome any help border inspectors could give to stopping drunken driving. He said his group and others are pressing for a state law to make it illegal for minors to enter Arizona with alcohol in their bodies.
Although agencies have no statistics on DUIs attributable to cross-border drinking, the magnitude of the problem is indicated by a recent crackdown in California.
After the second patrolman in 10 months lost his life to an underage drinker, the California Highway Patrol conducted two nights of intensive enforcement last month between the San Ysidro border crossing and San Diego.
Officers made 44 DUI arrests, issued 24 citations for other infractions, and gave 143 verbal warnings.
Ahr said he knew from experience as an INS border inspector in Texas that many drivers, young and adult, "probably shouldn't have been behind the wheel."
He said that as much as he supports efforts to curb drunken driving, "I think it's a classic situation of, OK, if they want to have a law, are they going to provide adequate staffing, resources, technology and so forth?"
He and Pitzer suggested that instead of giving federal inspectors the additional duty of screening for DUIs, legislation could allow local and state officers to take that responsibility at ports of entry.
Currently, non-federal police may enter the U.S. crossing zone only by invitation.
Flake, however, said he believes police staffing at the border would be more expensive, and that assessing fines and impounding autos could offset the cost of having border inspectors do the job.
"I would hope that if we give them this authority, it would have a substantial deterrent effect," Flake said. "Right now, drivers know they cannot be stopped."
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