Since 2020, U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel have collected a DNA sample from migrants seeking asylum at the southern border.
The little-known program has collected information from more than 1 million people so far. Agents swab the inside of a migrant’s mouth to collect saliva, and the information is stored indefinitely in a database operated by the FBI.
Melissa del Bosque, reporter and editor for The Border Chronicle, spoke to the Texas Standard about the program.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: I understand that more than 1.5 million migrants have had their DNA info collected and stored in this nationwide database, CODIS. Can you tell us more about this data set and how noncitizens came to be included in it?
Melissa del Bosque: Yes. So CODIS is an acronym for Combined DNA Index System. And it’s this massive computer database that local, state and federal police can search. And it contains DNA profiles from convicted offenders, unsolved crime evidence and missing persons, historically.
Since 2020, as you said in the intro, under the Trump administration, they expanded a DNA collection program where they’re now taking DNA from people crossing the border. Even if they’re not allowed into the country, they’re still taking their DNA, and they’re putting it into this computer where it can be searched by law enforcement.
I understand you spoke with some asylum seekers who had their DNA actually taken. What do they say about the experience?
I talked to a dozen people who had been recently deported in Mexico, and they did not understand that their DNA had been taken. Some people thought maybe it was a COVID test.
These are people that were only in the U.S. for a matter of hours because of the executive order by Biden, which has limited the number of people who can request asylum. So they were denied, but they had to leave a DNA sample before they were returned back to Mexico.
What examples can you give us as to how this data might actually be used in the future? What are you hearing?
Well, you know, private corporations are all over policing right now and what can be done with DNA. We’ve heard already stories about police searching through 23andMe and all those popular DNA tests that people do.
So in the future, there’s quite a lot that they’ll probably be able to do with DNA. One thing they’ve talked about is being able to predict what somebody looks like, like be able to draw a picture of a person just from their genetic profile.
» GET MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE STATE: Sign up for Texas Standard’s weekly newsletters
I gather this policy was initiated – you mentioned 2020, so that would put us in the Trump administration. And it was carried on under President Joe Biden. Have lawmakers in Congress weighed in on this one way or the other?
No, they haven’t. You know, this really flew under the radar. I’ve been reporting on the border for, gosh, 20 years. And I knew that, under the Trump administration, they had started doing DNA testing for some families, just to, you know, prove the parentage of children who were crossing.
I did not know that they had expanded this to just about everyone who crosses. So it really came as a surprise to me when I started talking to people who had been recently deported, you know, just in July, saying, “yeah, they took my DNA. They gave me this test.”
Has anyone talked about the legal implications here? I mean, there are rules around self-incrimination, searching and seizure, of course.
Yeah. I mean, that’s the question, right? Under the Fourth Amendment, police have to have probable cause, reasonable suspicion that you’ve committed a crime, and then you’re arrested. And then they take a DNA sample.
But these folks are asking for asylum. Crossing the border without documents is a civil case, you know, it’s not a criminal charge. So how, constitutionally, should CBP be able to take someone’s DNA then under those conditions? So that’s the question.
