ICE Collected Nearly 1 Million People's DNA Last Year—Including Young Children
ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children
A new Georgetown Law report reveals that ICE may have added up to 920,000 DNA profiles to the FBI's CODIS database in 2025, making DHS the largest source of new genetic profiles in the criminal DNA system. Despite most detainees having no criminal conviction, their DNA is stored indefinitely and can be searched against crime-scene evidence. The program has expanded to families and children, with at least 492 children under 14 swabbed by CBP, and has led to prosecutions for refusal.
The Fourth Amendment categorically prohibits the government from compelling you, without suspicion, to hand over your sensitive information on the speculation that it might be helpful for crime-solving in the future.
- voidUpdate
IF there was a secure and trustable way that a trusted government could retain DNA information, then I feel like people having a DNA test at birth or on becoming a citizen could be useful, both medically ("your sample indicates you may have a higher risk of dementia") and from a policing standpoint ("we found DNA on this woman's clothes and immediately matched it to this man who hasn't committed a crime before" or "we were able to identify this john doe because their DNA was on record"). However, given that companies and governments are awful, I don't think it could ever actually work in practice :/
- b3ing
Maybe they can use it later to match the ICE rapists with the women and kids that are being sexually assaulted, something no one wants to talk about
- pavlov
There’s a reason why Germany has extremely strict laws about how personally identifying information can be collected and stored.
America has yet to learn the same lesson, but has been on the road there for a decade now.
- aliasxneo
> Agency spreadsheets Georgetown obtained and analyzed show it sent the FBI the DNA of at least 1.36 million people between October 2020 and the end of 2024, more than a dozen times ICE's rate during the same time period.
So at the same time we saw a mass increase in border crossings we were also collecting their DNA? That's a huge number.
- penguin_booze
Unless ICE was also collecting young children, it should say: "... including that of young children".
- andrewclunn
Framing things as protecting children from predators, corporations, governments, etc... seems to always be the justification given for and against any measure directed at them. Child trafficking is real. Governments are already moving toward age verification online. Most people seem to legitimately only care about privacy or children's protection when it serves as a bludgeoning tool for "their team." Consider me sufficiently jaded on this issue.
- lenerdenator
This behavior will continue until an actual consequence is introduced.
- throwaway2027
Just in time to train an AI model on it and discriminate based on heuristics. /s