As captain of a U. S. Coast Guard cutter, Chuck is charged with patrolling the Mona Passage separating Puerto Rico from the Dominican Republic. Although not Hispanic, he and his wife are very fond of the warm, family-based culture they found in San Juan, where they lived.

While on patrol one day with his crew—many of whom are of Puerto Rican descent—an Immigration and Naturalization Service plane radios a request for Chuck’s cutter to intercept a small boat crossing toward a deserted section of the Puerto Rican coast. Chuck is not surprised. The passage, separating United States territory from an economically depressed nation, is a favored crossing-point for refugees, drug-runners, and would-be illegal aliens.

Making for the boat, Chuck can see it is filled to the gunwales not with terrorists or dealers, but with grandparents and infants. It is heading toward an isolated beach filled with brightly dressed people holding welcoming banners and carrying picnic hampers.

These are families seeking to reunite with their elderly and young. Knowing their keen sense of family, Chuck finds his heart going out to them. Yet his constitutional duty is clear: It is his job to prevent individuals from entering the United States illegally by stopping them and returning them to the Dominican Republic.

As Chuck and his crew close in, the boat crosses a sand bar too shallow for the cutter. Chuck does, however, have an outboard-powered inflatable onboard that might stand a chance of catching the small boat. Yet giving chase so close to land, he knows, might cause some of the passengers to panic and try to wade ashore while their boat is still dangerously far from the beach. While his duty is to enforce the law, he also knows that the Coast Guard's job is above all to save life, not to endanger it.

Should he launch the inflatable? Or should he turn away, citing the sand bar as the final impediment to the capture?

Read more dilemmas: Military Dilemmas