My friend Morgan Smith wrote this note about the Rio Grande in July 2024. Learn more about Morgan here , here and here .
J.A.M. v. USA "The Court holds that Oscar is entitled to a much lower, but still notable award of $175,000 because he was somewhat older at the time of the incident, was detained for about half...
Path2Papers, July 17, 2024 " What are the policy changes the Biden administration is implementing regarding temporary work visas? On June 18, 2024, the Biden administration announced a policy...
DOJ, July 18, 2024 "The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against Southwest Key Programs Inc. (Southwest Key), a Texas-based nonprofit that provides housing to unaccompanied children who are...
Jeanne Kuang, CalMatters, July 18, 2024 "Even with all the industries where Californians went on strike during last year’s “hot labor summer,” some of the most active sites of...
Georgetown Law, May 21, 2024
"The U.S. government has a message to immigrant communities: we’re watching you, at the genetic level.
A new report by the Center on Privacy & Technology, Raiding the Genome: How the United States Government Is Abusing Its Immigration Powers to Amass DNA for Future Policing, is the first in-depth analysis of the drastic expansion, after a DOJ rule change in 2020, of a massive Department of Homeland Security program to take DNA from thousands of people every day. DHS’s program operates with essentially no oversight, and the DNA they take is used for criminal policing and prosecution.
Download full report (PDF): Raiding the Genome: How the United States Government Is Abusing Its Immigration Powers to Amass DNA for Future Policing here.
Download just the executive summary (PDF) here.
Under a Trump-era Department of Justice rule (left in place by the Biden administration), DHS can compel DNA samples from anyone the agency “detains.” While limiting DHS DNA collection to only those the agency detains might seem like a serious limitation, our report finds that it is nothing of the sort. The term “detained” in the immigration context is both broad and vague, so as a practical matter almost nobody is categorically excluded from DNA collection by the requirement that they first be “detained.” Once DHS collects DNA, it sends the samples to the FBI, where the FBI adds profiles created from the samples to the nation’s criminal policing DNA database, CODIS, and stores the samples themselves indefinitely. Once in CODIS, the profiles become accessible to police at the local, state, federal, and international levels for use in criminal investigations.
Relying on more than a year and a half of research, the report makes the following key findings:
The report concludes by calling on the Biden administration and Congress to put an immediate stop to this program. We hope that the information uncovered in this report will aid organizers and advocates working to resist government biometric collection and surveillance practices. Together, we must stop DHS from raiding the genome."