The U.S. Government Accounting Office is headed for Temecula next week to begin an extensive review of U.S. Border Patrol checkpoints across the Southwest, from California to Texas, federal officials said this week.

The review, which could take several months, comes in response to formal requests from five congressmen: U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Temecula; Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Riverside; Rep. Chris Cox, R-Newport Beach; Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Tucson; and Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky.

According to Rich Stana, the office's director for homeland security and justice issues, employees will be examining the following areas:

• The role of checkpoints within the context of overall U.S. border security.

• The activities performed at interior checkpoints.

• The costs and benefits to law enforcement and local communities of the checkpoints.

• How U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol, evaluates the checkpoints.

Federal officials will interview Border Patrol officers and others, review documents and observe operations, Stana said.

"We want to see how they all operate," he said.

Several months from now, Stana said, the federal agency will issue a report that will be available on its Web site, www.gao.gov. Depending on the outcome of the review, the report may contain recommendations for changes at the checkpoints, he said.

A spokesman for Issa said earlier this week that the congressman is glad to hear that the review is about to get under way. The study "will show that freeway checkpoints are an ineffective security strategy," said Issa spokesman Frederick Hill.

Reached by phone Tuesday, the president of the National Border Patrol Council wasn't pleased with news of the evaluation. The council is the union representing rank-and-file Border Patrol agents.

"I am always concerned when Washington bureaucrats come out and insert their so-called opinions on the day-to-day operations, rather than relying on the people who actually do the job," T.J. Bonner said. "We are the ones who are the experts."

He said he is frustrated that so many people, including Issa, claim the checkpoints are ineffective, when the problem, he contends, stems from a lack of manpower.

"They say the numbers are down; well, duh, you are not giving us the resources to do the job the way it needs to be done," he said.

In a recent interview, a union representative at the Temecula Border Patrol station cited a 2003 memo from the station head at the time, stating that 300 agents would be needed at the Temecula station to do an effective job. Border Patrol documents show there are now about 125 agents working out of the Temecula station.

The Californian recently reported that internal Border Patrol documents show the number of hours the Temecula checkpoint on Interstate 15 was in operation fell from more than 75 percent of the time two years ago to about 22 percent of the time in August.

Bonner said he believes the checkpoints are an essential second line of defense of U.S. borders. While the Border Patrol focuses almost all of its resources and manpower on the border itself, there are an estimated 8 million to 16 million illegal immigrants in the country, immigration observers say.

"That just shows that the strategy of catching everything at the border is obviously not working," he said.

The issue of illegal immigration heated up in Southwest County this summer, when reports surfaced in June that Washington legislators had pressured Border Patrol administrators into halting a series of sweeps in inland Southern Californian cities. In just two weeks, the sweeps snagged nearly 500 illegal immigrants, officials said. In reaction to the halt, local Border Patrol supporters held a series of protests in the following weeks.

Those protests brought Undersecretary of Homeland Security Asa Hutchinson to an Aug. 13 Temecula town hall meeting on illegal immigration. More than 1,000 people attended the meeting and blasted Hutchinson and the federal government for not doing more to reduce the flow of illegal immigrants into Southern California.

Issa has long been a leading critic of the checkpoints as being ineffective, saying they should be closed and the money used to pay for other enforcement efforts against illegal immigration.

Rather than criticizing the use of the checkpoints, Issa and other critics should instead offer the help needed to improve checkpoint performance, Bonner said.

Issa spokesman Hill said the real issue is applying limited resources where they will have the greatest effect, as shown by the mobile patrol sweeps.

Freeman Sawyer, a member of the local anti-illegal-immigrant group Citizens' Alliance for a Secure America, said he is amazed at Issa's support for closing the checkpoints. Their closure stands to cost the local economy dearly, he said, by seeing many of the Border Patrol agents who live in this area transferred elsewhere.

"What kind of a congressman in any other district would come up with a plan that would reduce the economy in their own district?" Sawyer asked.

Contact staff writer William Finn Bennett at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2624, or wbennett@californian.com.