Routine DNA collection from immigrants by federal authorities has skyrocketed since 2020, with a 50-fold increase in the number of samples held in a national database of sensitive genetic information, according to a report released Tuesday.
In nearly four years, the DNA database, which is shared with law enforcement agencies across the country, added more than 1.5 million noncitizen profiles, according to the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology. That compares with about 30,000 total samples obtained since 2005, when Congress authorized DNA collection by federal immigration authorities, the study found.
The center said the sharp increase raises questions about whether immigrants' privacy rights are being violated, as well as the overall constitutionality of the program.
Immigration agents routinely take DNA samples “without any of the procedural rules that police are supposed to follow before they can take a person's DNA,” the center said in the report.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The increase is attributed to a 2020 Justice Department rule change instituted by the Trump administration that requires the Department of Homeland Security to collect DNA from nearly all people detained by agents at the border and within the country.
After agents collect DNA, samples are sent to the FBI for analysis and inclusion in a federal database called the Combined DNA Index System. According to the report, those profiles are labeled as “criminals” and can be searched indefinitely by law enforcement authorities across the country. The database, which was introduced in 1998, has a total of 22 million DNA profiles.
When collecting DNA, immigration agents do not need probable cause or warrants that apply in the criminal justice context, the report states, although police use the data for criminal investigations. Georgetown researchers analyzed the legality of the program and argue that it is unconstitutional because it violates the Fourth Amendment.
If Homeland Security agents continue collecting DNA at the rate the agency projects, one-third of the profiles in the federal database used for criminal investigations will be of migrants and immigrants, the researchers projected. This is based on the Justice Department's prediction that immigration agents would submit 748,000 samples per year.
“The federal government is amassing a huge trove of DNA, starting with a racialized, often traumatized, and politically powerless group: noncitizens,” the report states. “And it is using the federal agency that operates with the fewest practical limitations and the least oversight – the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – to do it.”
In its fiscal year 2024 budget request, the FBI sought to nearly double its $57 million budget for processing DNA samples, citing the need to process samples collected by Homeland Security agents.
As part of a House appropriations hearing in April 2023, FBI Director Christopher Wray submitted a statement acknowledging that the agency was facing a backlog of 650,000 samples and that the addition of noncitizen DNA had “created a huge budget and personnel deficit.”
Investigators interviewed several people who said they did not know their DNA had been collected, although internal policies stipulate that agents must inform people beforehand. Others said they submitted to a cheek swab under threat of criminal prosecution if they did not comply.
In response to a June 2022 email from the Georgetown center researcher, Immigration and Customs Enforcement official Valentina Seeley said those who do not comply with DNA sampling are warned of the consequences “and subsequently referred.” to criminal proceedings” if non-compliance persists.
Stevie Glaberson, one of the report's authors, said that regardless of whether immigration agents adequately inform people in their custody, the process is coercive.
“Even when people know what's going on, they're terrified of asking questions, they're terrified of objecting, they're terrified of refusing,” he said.
