A Georgetown University privacy law group accused the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of illegally collecting U.S. citizens’ DNA at immigration checkpoints in a Sept. 23 report.
The Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology, which focuses on surveillance and privacy law, analyzed data spreadsheets from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a DHS agency that manages border security, finding more than 2,000 instances where the agency collected detained U.S. citizens’ DNA from 2020 to 2024. The report’s authors argued that the DNA collection allows broad government surveillance that threatens U.S. citizens’ personal liberties, a finding that they hope will spur Congress to enact greater oversight over DHS.
While immigration officials are permitted under federal law to collect the DNA of citizens arrested for federal crimes so agents can track and process arrestees, the report’s authors argue that many instances involved citizens who were merely detained and not charged.
Emerald Tse, an associate at the Center on Privacy & Technology who co-wrote the report, said the report’s findings demonstrate that the DHS has been collecting DNA from U.S. citizens.
“From this update, we found that DHS has regularly and knowingly been taking DNA from U.S. citizens,” Tse told The Hoya. “It’s been doing so beyond its legal authority, and many times without justification.”
While CBP’s directives state its officers may never refer to U.S. citizens as detainees in logs, CBP’s own data shows that it did so at least 500 times, according to the report.
Such instances in the report include DHS collecting the DNA of a 25-year-old citizen who was detained with no charge in March 2021 and of a 19-year-old citizen whom a prosecutor declined to bring charges against in August 2024.
A February CBP directive refers to DNA collection as a standard procedure akin to fingerprinting, which helps law enforcement identify and track individuals. Once immigration officials collect a detainee’s DNA, they submit it to CODIS, the FBI’s DNA database, becoming part of permanent law enforcement records.
The report’s authors argued the federal agents’ justifications for sending DNA information to the FBI were generally “legally questionable, nonsensical or altogether absent.”
Hilton Beckham, CBP’s assistant commissioner of public affairs, said DNA collection was necessary to reverse what she deemed the former President Joe Biden administration’s “reckless policies,” though the report only includes data from Biden’s tenure.
“In order to secure our borders, CBP devoted every resource available to identify who was entering our country, making sure we do not let in human smugglers, child sex traffickers and other criminals into American communities,” Beckham wrote to The Hoya.
Though data from President Donald Trump’s second term was not available, the authors said they expect an “even broader and more reckless approach” under his administration due to his immigration policies.
Beckham cited two statutes that allow immigration officials different avenues to collect DNA: U.S. citizens who are arrested and charged with a crime, or non-citizens who are detained. Under the statutes, DNA can never be collected from U.S. citizens who are merely detained without a formal arrest and charge.
Stevie Glaberson, the director of research and advocacy for the Center on Privacy & Technology and another report co-author, said Beckham’s assertions do not address the report’s findings of allegedly illegal DNA collection.
“There is a federal statute that permits the collection of DNA from even U.S. citizens who are arrested, charged and convicted of crimes, but the second piece does not, by definition, include U.S. citizens,” Glaberson told The Hoya. “There is no authority to take DNA from a U.S. citizen solely on the basis that an immigration authority has quote-unquote ‘detained’ them. Yet, that’s what we see over and over and over again in CBP’s own data.”
Civil rights and legal groups have frequently criticized the government’s DNA collection programs, including those used by immigration agents, arguing that it infringes on personal liberties. DNA collection has grown rapidly over the last five years as law enforcement agencies ramp up surveillance, according to a May 2024 report from the Center on Privacy & Technology.
The Tuesday report, which was an update to the 2024 report, centers on an analysis of a series of spreadsheets that CBP released in February as partial compliance with a public records request. The analysis comes three months after the center accused DHS of obstructing information in a June lawsuit, which it filed alongside the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, a legal advocacy group.
Amelia Dagen, a staff attorney at Amica working on the suit, said the public should advocate for more transparency because the alleged DHS overreach is a threat to constitutional liberties.
“Given the lack of any checks and balances on DHS’ DNA collection and the ever-increasing number of people subjected to arrest by DHS, it is clear that more and more people’s constitutional rights will be bulldozed,” Dagen wrote to The Hoya. “That opens the door to more U.S. citizens’ DNA being stored without proper security measures against improper use, including through criminal investigation and prosecution.”
The Center on Technology & Privacy’s latest findings do not affect the lawsuit, according to Dagen.
The Center on Technology & Privacy is a think tank within the Georgetown University Law Center (GULC) that advocates for privacy and surveillance law and policy in the United States. The center’s experts conduct research alongside Georgetown faculty, host legal fellows and train GULC students in law, advocacy and policy.
Tse said the report helps advocates and policymakers better understand how to address the federal government’s actions.
“This tells us that these government surveillance practices that may appear to be targeted to a certain population really impact all of us,” Tse said. “This was something that we knew back when we only theoretically knew that they could be taking DNA from U.S. citizens. Now we’re certain that it’s happening, and it’s very clear that everybody should be concerned about this.”
“There’s very few limitations on DHS immigration agents taking your DNA,” Tse added.
Emily Tucker, the Center on Privacy & Technology’s executive director and the third report author, said the different treatment of citizen and non-citizen DNA collection demonstrates the extent of CBP’s unchecked power.
“It’s not actually more important that they’re taking DNA from citizens than that they’re taking DNA from everybody,” Tucker told The Hoya. “It’s really just evidence that there are absolutely no guardrails. There are no limits on who they’ll take DNA from, what reason they will take DNA or how they will go about doing it.”
Glaberson said anybody reading the center’s report should recognize that federal law enforcement overreach is a dangerous threat.
“If you think your status as a citizen, or that you have lawful status protects you from some of these authoritarian practices, you’re wrong,” Glaberson said. “We need to cut off these types of surveillance programs, these types of practices at their inception, because just because it’s not you today doesn’t mean it’s not going to be you tomorrow.”