The Department of Homeland Security has been quietly harvesting DNA from nearly 2,000 US citizens - including children as young as 14 - and feeding it into the FBI's criminal database without congressional authorization. Newly released government data exposes a surveillance program that's been operating in legal gray areas since 2020, raising serious questions about civil liberties and government overreach.
The numbers tell a disturbing story. Between 2020 and 2024, Customs and Border Protection agents collected DNA from nearly 2,000 US citizens and funneled those genetic profiles directly into CODIS, the FBI's nationwide criminal database. Among them were 95 minors - some as young as 14 - along with travelers who were never charged with any crime.
"Those spreadsheets tell a chilling story," Stevie Glaberson, director of research and advocacy at Georgetown's Center on Privacy & Technology, told WIRED. "They show DNA taken from people as young as 4 and as old as 93 - and they also show CBP flagrantly violating the law by taking DNA from citizens without justification."
The scale of this genetic surveillance expansion is staggering. DHS has pumped roughly 2.6 million profiles into CODIS since 2020, fundamentally reshaping what was once a database focused on convicted offenders. By April 2025, the detainee index had swelled to over 2.6 million profiles - and here's the kicker: 97% were collected under civil, not criminal, authority.
This massive shift started with a bureaucratic move that flew under the radar. In April 2020, the Justice Department quietly revoked a long-standing waiver that let DHS skip DNA collection from immigration detainees. That single rule change opened the floodgates for mass genetic sampling at the border and beyond.
Former FBI Director Christopher Wray saw the tsunami coming. During 2023 Senate testimony, he warned that DHS's DNA deluge was overwhelming the bureau's systems. The agency went from processing a few thousand samples monthly to 92,000 - more than 10 times its historical intake. The surge created a backlog of 650,000 unprocessed kits, potentially letting detained individuals slip through the cracks before their genetic profiles could flag investigative leads.
But the program's legal foundation remains shaky at best. Federal law reserves mandatory DNA collection for criminal arrests, yet CBP officers have been exercising broad discretion to swab citizens in civil proceedings. Many cases show agents leaving the "charges" field blank or invoking civil penalties as justification - clear violations of statutory boundaries, according to privacy experts.
The Trump administration's renewed focus on border enforcement has only accelerated these practices. A January 2025 executive order instructed DHS agencies to deploy "any available technologies" for identity verification, explicitly covering genetic testing. This month, federal officials announced they're soliciting bids worth up to $3 million to install Rapid DNA machines at local booking facilities nationwide - devices that can generate CODIS-ready profiles in under two hours.
"The Department of Homeland Security has been piloting a secret DNA collection program of American citizens since 2020. Now, the training wheels have come off," said Anthony Enriquez, vice president of advocacy at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. The concern isn't just about collection - it's about retention. Once DHS uploads a profile to CODIS, the government keeps the physical DNA sample indefinitely, with no mechanism to remove questionable entries.
Oversight has been practically nonexistent. The DHS Inspector General found in 2021 that the department lacked central oversight of DNA collection, calling years of noncompliance an "unacceptable dereliction." Senator Ron Wyden has pressed both DHS and DOJ for explanations about why children's DNA is being captured and whether CODIS can reject improperly obtained samples.
Privacy advocates warn we're witnessing CODIS morph from a forensic tool into a surveillance archive. Georgetown and allied groups have sued DHS over its refusal to release program records, highlighting how little the public knows about genetic data use, storage, or sharing protocols.
At the current pace, Georgetown researchers estimate DHS alone could account for one-third of CODIS by 2034. That projection assumes the program continues operating as it has - but recent policy changes suggest it's only accelerating. What started as a tool for solving violent crimes has become a genetic dragnet sweeping up immigrants, travelers, and US citizens with minimal legal safeguards or public oversight.
This isn't just about immigration enforcement anymore - it's about the quiet transformation of America's genetic surveillance infrastructure. When government agencies can collect and permanently retain DNA from citizens without clear legal authority, we've crossed a line that demands immediate congressional attention. The question isn't whether DHS will continue this program, but whether lawmakers will act to establish meaningful boundaries before genetic surveillance becomes the new normal at America's borders and beyond.
