Federal agents swabbed the cheeks of more than 2,000 American citizens, including kids, and folded their DNA into a police database built for immigration enforcement.
Quick Take
- Homeland Security’s own records confirm agents lowered the DNA-collection age from 18 to 14 in 2020.
- Georgetown Law researchers say Customs and Border Protection collected DNA from over 1.36 million people between late 2020 and the end of 2024.
- More than 2,000 of those samples came from U.S. citizens, including minors, based on records the agency itself released.
- A 2021 government watchdog report found Homeland Security failed to properly oversee how its own agencies handled DNA collection.
- Democrat lawmakers first sounded the alarm in 2020 after agents began swabbing teenagers at the border.
A Rule Built Through Federal Process, Not a Secret Order
The Department of Justice issued a final rule in 2020 giving the Attorney General power to order Homeland Security to collect DNA from immigration detainees, using authority from the 2005 DNA Fingerprint Act. Homeland Security’s own privacy paperwork confirms the program is real and was formally expanded that year, including lowering the minimum collection age from 18 down to just 14 years old.
Three House Democrats, Debbie Dingell, Veronica Escobar, and Rashida Tlaib, wrote a joint letter in January 2020 raising concerns almost immediately. They stated that Border Patrol had begun collecting DNA “from individuals as young as 14 years of age” at stations in Detroit and Eagle Pass, Texas. Whatever side of the immigration debate you’re on, teenagers getting swabbed for a federal police database deserves scrutiny.
American Citizens Caught in a Border Enforcement Net
This is where the story shifts from border policy to a broader privacy problem. Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology reviewed records the agency released through a public records request and found Customs and Border Protection “knowingly taken DNA from U.S. citizens on a regular basis,” with more than 2,000 citizen samples collected between 2020 and 2024. These aren’t foreign nationals crossing illegally. These are Americans whose genetic profiles now sit inside a system meant to police immigration.
Researchers say the scale of the program grew fast under the Biden administration, with Customs and Border Protection collecting DNA from roughly 1.36 million people between October 2020 and December 2024. That kind of expansion, done with little public debate, is exactly the sort of quiet bureaucratic overreach conservatives have warned about for years. A government program that starts as a narrow enforcement tool rarely stays narrow.
Watchdog Found the Agency Couldn’t Even Manage Its Own Rules
Homeland Security’s Inspector General audited the program in 2021 and found a mess. Of five agencies required to collect DNA from arrestees, only the Secret Service did it consistently. Immigration and Customs Enforcement collected DNA inconsistently, and Customs and Border Protection collected none of what it was supposed to during the review period. The watchdog concluded the department “did not adequately oversee its law enforcement components,” a damning admission from the government’s own internal reviewers.
That finding matters because it undercuts any claim that this system runs with careful safeguards. If the agency can’t reliably follow its own DNA-collection mandate, Americans have every reason to question how citizen samples got mixed in and how long that genetic data sits in a criminal database. Once a DNA profile enters that system, there’s no simple way for an innocent citizen to know it happened or to get it removed.
Legal Authority Doesn’t Erase the Privacy Question
Homeland Security defends the program by pointing to its statutory footing, describing Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement as “statutorily mandated” to collect DNA from certain people in custody. That’s a fair legal point, and it means courts aren’t likely to strike the program down on authority grounds alone. But having legal permission to run a program doesn’t answer whether it was built with enough guardrails to keep American citizens’ genetic data out of a system designed for people crossing the border illegally.
Conservatives have long pushed back against government programs that grow without accountability, whether it’s spending, surveillance, or federal overreach into everyday life. This program checks those same boxes: authorized through rulemaking, expanded with little public notice, and now confirmed by the government’s own watchdog to lack proper oversight. President Trump’s Homeland Security team now has a chance to fix what past administrations let slide, tightening the rules so American citizens never end up in a database meant for immigration enforcement.
Sources:
military.com, dhs.gov, debbiedingell.house.gov, law.georgetown.edu, yahoo.com
