Three prominent civil rights organizations have filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), accusing the agency of withholding critical information about its sweeping collection of DNA from noncitizens.
The Georgetown Center on Privacy and Technology, the Amica Center for Immigrants Rights in Northwest D.C., and Americans for Immigrant Justice in Miami say DHS has failed to respond to their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request submitted in the summer of 2024.
The lawsuit, filed in the District of Columbia, comes after more than nine months without what the groups describe as a meaningful response. The original Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request sought details about how DHS collects, stores, and uses DNA samples taken from noncitizens — a practice the organizations say has expanded the FBI’s criminal DNA database (CODIS) by over 5,000 percent since 2020.
“This information comes at a critical moment in national immigration policy,” the organizations stated in a news release, “where the administration is routinely carrying out enforcement actions — including detention and deportation — against noncitizens without regard for their lawful presence in the United States.”
They further argue that the DNA collection effort, often done under coercive and legally ambiguous circumstances, disproportionately targets people of color.
“The Department of Homeland Security has built out a massive DNA-collection program, quickly becoming the primary contributor of DNA profiles to the nation’s criminal policing DNA database, CODIS,” said Stevie Glaberson, director of research and advocacy for the Privacy Center. “DHS is doing so despite collecting DNA from people accused of no crime and while operating with none of the constraints that are supposed to be in place before the government compels someone to give over their most sensitive personal information. Americans deserve visibility on the details of this program, and the department’s lack of transparency is unacceptable.”
It would be a mistake to think of what the administration is doing as immigration enforcement, said Emily Tucker, executive director at the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law. “To the contrary, Trump is using immigration powers as the vehicle for the activities of a militarized police force, a weapon he can wield broadly and violently without having to navigate obstacles in the form of transparency, accountability, or oversight.”
Tucker said the DNA-collection program is to instill fear in all those who are against the president’s policies.
“The Department’s DNA-collection program is one piece of a massive dragnet that sweeps in information about all of us not just to fuel deportation — although it does — but primarily to intimidate and silence those who would oppose him,” she continued. “We’re filing this lawsuit in the hopes to, at the very least, chip away at the obscurity in which this administration is carrying out its most dangerous programs.”
Daniel Melo, senior attorney at the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, emphasized why the lawsuit is important.
“As immigration enforcement agencies continue to deploy sophisticated tools to target, surveil, and arbitrarily detain noncitizens,” he said, “the community most impacted by these policy choices has a right to know how, when, and why genetic material is being taken, stored, and used against noncitizens — potentially indefinitely — simply because they were not born in the United States.”
Further, Tucker declared that the program is an assault to people’s rights and justice.
“Secretive government surveillance programs, like the wide-scale and unprecedented program to collect and store noncitizen DNA, are a threat to freedom and safety for citizens and noncitizens alike,” Tucker said. “The Freedom of Information Act demands that the government act openly. When the government attempts to ignore this demand, Americans for Immigrant Justice is committed to pursuing transparency and accountability.”