Homeland Security Begins DNA Testing Program at Southern Border - Do You Support the Plan?

What’s the story?

• The Department of Homeland Security is launching an “unprecedented” DNA-testing pilot program at the southern border in an effort to identify and prosecute individuals posing as families.
• Migrants attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border with children will be asked to submit to a voluntary DNA swab to help root out adults who falsely pose as the relatives of the children they’re travelling with.
• Border Patrol reported it made about 66,000 apprehensions of people crossing the border illegally in February, including 36,000 parents and children.

How will it work?

• “Rapid DNA testing” involves a cheek swab and can provide results, on average, in about 90 minutes.
• "This is part of a larger investigative process. This is not screenings, this is not just random application of this, this is a pilot designed to assess the usefulness of this technology in an investigative process," said ICE acting Deputy Director Derek Benner, calling it "new ground" for the department.
• "An individual consenting to DNA testing will be instructed to swab his or her own cheeks, while being observed by agents and qualified technicians supplied by the vendor," a DHS official said, adding that the adult will then be instructed to swab the cheeks of his or her claimed child.

What are people saying?

• National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd said he supports the use of DNA testing as a means of preventing child abuse.

"Rapid DNA is really the only way that we are going to positively be able to identify these children. Even if the cost is great, in order to protect these children, I think the cost is well worth it," he said.

• Vera Eidelman, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project called the plan "yet another example of the Trump administration seeking to intimidate and deter asylum seekers."
• Eidelman added: "Forced DNA collection is coercive and intrusive, and it raises serious privacy and civil liberties concerns. The government is clearly interested in learning more than an individual's identity in this instance."

"The government claims it does not plan to store or share the information collected from these intrusive and coercive tests for now, but the fact that it is even building out this surveillance infrastructure — using the pretext of the border — should trouble us all. With other government actors, from local law enforcement agencies to the FBI, also rolling out Rapid DNA systems, it is not hard to imagine a nightmare of a centralized government database."

What do you think?

Do you support DHS’ DNA testing program? Should it become standard? Take action and tell your reps, then share your thoughts below.

—Josh Herman

 (Photo Credit: iStockphoto / vichinterlang)