DHS Has Been Quietly Collecting DNA From U.S. Citizens for Years, Funneling It Into FBI’s CODIS Without Oversight
by Jo Ellen Nott
The Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) is facing scrutiny over its unauthorized practice of harvesting DNA from nearly 2,000 U.S. citizens, including children, and submitting their genetic profiles to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (“CODIS”), as reported by Wired. This large-scale expansion, which lacks legislative authorization, has quietly transformed the federal crime-fighting repository into a genetic surveillance archive.
Newly released government data, analyzed by Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy & Technology, reveals that between 2020 and 2024, Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) agents collected DNA from nearly 2,000 U.S. citizens, including an estimated 95 minors, some as young as 14. This collection extends to travelers never charged with a crime, with agents often improperly invoking civil penalties to justify swabs reserved by law for criminal arrests. Experts warn that CBP officers are using broad discretion to place Americans under indefinite heightened inspection without legal authority.
The sheer volume of the program is concerning. Since 2020, DHS has contributed approximately 2.6 million profiles to CODIS, exceeding earlier projections and pushing the database’s “detainee” index over 2.6 million by April 2025. Most alarmingly, 97 percent of these profiles were collected under civil, not criminal, authority, fundamentally altering the system’s purpose. Former FBI Director Christopher Wray warned in 2023 that this influx, which saw submissions jump from thousands monthly to 92,000 per month, threatened to overwhelm the Bureau and created a backlog of roughly 650,000 unprocessed kits.
This operation has advanced with a documented lack of centralized oversight. As early as 2021, the DHS Inspector General flagged the Department’s failure to monitor DNA collection practices, noting that years of noncompliance could undermine public safety. An earlier rebuke from the Office of Special Counsel labeled CBP’s failures as an “unacceptable dereliction.” Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) has pressed federal agencies for answers on why minors’ DNA is being captured and permanently retained.
Rights advocates allege the program is a full-fledged genetic surveillance regime operating without transparency or legal safeguards. Once DHS uploads a profile, the government retains the physical DNA sample indefinitely, with no established process to remove profiles even when the legality of the detention is disputed. Georgetown’s Center on Privacy & Technology and allied groups have filed suit, underscoring the government’s refusal to fully disclose how this confidential data is being used and shared.
The unauthorized mass collection of DNA from U.S. citizens by DHS represents a fundamental breach of constitutional privacy protections and a dangerous precedent for governmental overreach. When federal agencies operate biological surveillance programs without legislative authorization, judicial oversight, or even basic accountability mechanisms, they don’t just violate individual rights – they establish a framework where the most intimate aspects of human identity can be permanently seized and retained by the state without suspicion of wrongdoing. The question is no longer whether this program exceeds legal boundaries but whether a free society will tolerate the permanent genetic surveillance of its citizens as the new normal.
Sources: Wired; ArsTechnica
As a digital subscriber to Criminal Legal News, you can access full text and downloads for this and other premium content.
Already a subscriber? Login
