Privacy

US immigration authorities are collecting and uploading the DNA information of migrants, including children, to a national criminal database, according to government documents released earlier this month.

The database includes the DNA of people who were either arrested or convicted of a crime, which law enforcement uses when seeking a match for DNA collected at a crime scene. However, most of the people whose DNA has been collected by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), the agency that published the documents, were not listed as having been accused of any felonies. Regardless, CBP is now creating a detailed DNA profile on migrants that will be permanently searchable by law enforcement, which amounts to a “massive expansion of genetic surveillance”, one expert said.

The DNA information is stored in a database managed by the FBI called the Combined DNA Index System (Codis), which is used across the country by local, state and federal law enforcement to identify suspects of crimes using their DNA data.

Wired first reported the practice and the existence of these documents, and estimates there are more than 133,000 migrant teens and children whose DNA has been collected and uploaded to Codis. One of them was just four years old.