A Georgetown University privacy law group alleged the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is obstructing information on DHS’s collection of noncitizens’ DNA in a federal lawsuit filed June 2.
The Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology, which focuses on surveillance and privacy law and policy, sued alongside the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights and Americans for Immigrant Justice — two immigrant rights groups — for information on how DHS uses the DNA it acquires, according to the complaint. The lawsuit came 10 months after the Georgetown center initially requested records about the DNA collection program, with which DHS did not comply.
DHS has been recording detained immigrants’ DNA since 2005 but massively ramped up the program in 2020, according to a May 2024 report from the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology. The report outlines how the first Trump administration changed regulations to allow DHS to start a “large-scale” DNA collection program, which the Biden administration then maintained.
Emerald Tse, an associate at the Center on Privacy & Technology and a co-author of the report, said the plaintiffs hope to uncover how DHS oversees and uses the genetic information it collects.
“We are demanding that DHS disclose agency policies on who they collect DNA from, how to collect samples and where the samples are being stored,” Tse wrote to The Hoya. “The public deserves to know the purpose for collecting DNA and how the agency is handling this incredibly sensitive data.”
Emily Tucker, executive director of the Center on Privacy & Technology and another report co-author, said in a statement that the DNA program goes beyond the scope of “immigration enforcement.”
“Trump is using immigration powers to justify the activities of his militarized federal police force because there is so little institutional or judicial oversight or accountability for executive enforcement actions that invoke ‘immigration authority,’” Tucker said in the statement.
“This program is one part of a massive surveillance dragnet that sweeps in information about everyone,” Tucker added. “They will use it for deportation, but they will also use it to intimidate, silence and target anyone they perceive as the enemy.”
Prior to 2020, DHS generally collected noncitizens’ DNA only when noncitizens were arrested for criminal acts, according to Daniel Melo, a senior attorney at Amica. But since then, DHS has increased its contributions to CODIS, the FBI’s DNA database, by 5,000% without providing clarity on how it is using that information, according to the Center on Privacy & Technology’s report.
Melo said the increase in collection was “radical” and the public deserves to know how DHS is using the DNA it collects.
“While some thin legal protections exist for the collection of genetic material in the criminal legal context, DHS interprets its authority so broadly that, as a practical matter, no one is excluded from collection, and it shows in the numbers,” Melo wrote to The Hoya.
“Separate and apart from the constitutionality of DHS’s mass collection and storage of this deeply private information, the public has a right to know what the government is doing with noncitizens’ genetic material,” Melo added.
DHS did not respond to a request for comment.
Tse said the program’s lack of oversight leaves personal genetic information in dangerous hands.
“An individual’s DNA can reveal incredibly sensitive information about not just that person but entire communities of people,” Tse wrote. “DHS’s DNA collection program empowers federal agents to collect the DNA of any person they decide to stop, with essentially no oversight.”
Civil rights groups have previously criticized the government’s DNA collection program for intruding on personal liberties. WIRED recently reported that Customs and Border Protection, DHS’s law enforcement agency, added DNA profiles for more than 130,000 minors, prompting widespread backlash.
Tse said that by focusing on noncitizens, DNA collection disproportionately targets communities of color who already face over-policing.
“The vast majority of people who come into contact with immigration enforcement are those from communities of color, so people of color are the most likely to have their DNA taken under DHS’s program,” Tse wrote. “The expansion of DNA collection will undoubtedly deepen those disparities.”
Melo said the government’s actions ultimately pose a threat to both noncitizens and citizens by broadening the scope of federal law enforcement, pointing to the similar trajectory of phone surveillance technology as an example.
“Genetic material knows no borders and doesn’t recognize citizenship, so the government is invariably building up a database that spans a community of mixed-status individuals,” Melo wrote. “The history of law enforcement militarization also tells that what is today deployed against the marginalized, in this case, noncitizens — a community largely without a political voice — will be refined and developed further before emerging in the lives of the rest of the U.S. population.”