In a revelation that has sent shockwaves through privacy circles and civil liberties advocates alike, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has quietly amassed DNA samples from nearly 2,000 U.S. citizens between 2020 and 2024, funneling these genetic profiles into the FBI’s vast criminal database, the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS). The practice, which has swept up teenagers as young as 14 and even children as young as four, has ignited fierce debate about the reach of government surveillance and the erosion of constitutional safeguards at America’s borders.
According to a detailed analysis by Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy & Technology, the DNA collection program—originally designed to target noncitizens—has, in practice, ensnared American citizens, minors, and travelers never charged with a crime. The findings, based on recently released government data and reported by outlets like WIRED and Newsweek, paint a picture of a system operating with scant oversight, broad agent discretion, and little transparency.
The story of a 25-year-old U.S. citizen stopped in March 2021 at Chicago’s Midway Airport encapsulates the controversy. Though never charged with a crime, the individual was subjected to a cheek swab by U.S. border patrol agents. Their DNA was then sent to the FBI and stored in CODIS, a database used by law enforcement nationwide to identify suspects. This person is just one among about 2,000 citizens whose DNA was collected and shared with the FBI by DHS between 2020 and 2024, as revealed by Georgetown’s privacy center.
The scope of the program is startling. Not only have U.S. citizens been caught up in the dragnet, but so too have minors—at least 95 of those sampled were under 18, some as young as 14, and reports indicate that children as young as four have had their DNA collected. In dozens of cases, border agents left the “charges” field blank or cited only civil infractions, such as “failure to declare” items bought abroad, as justification for taking genetic samples. Georgetown’s director of research and advocacy, Stevie Glaberson, called it “a flagrant and alarming abuse of power,” telling WIRED, “They show DNA taken from people as young as 4 and as old as 93—and, as our new analysis found, they also show CBP flagrantly violating the law by taking DNA from citizens without justification.”
Current regulations technically permit DNA collection from individuals who have been arrested, charged, or convicted of crimes, as well as noncitizens who have been detained. But the law does not authorize collecting DNA from U.S. citizens merely because they are detained or stopped for civil infractions. Yet, the recently released data shows that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) does not have a system to check whether there is a lawful reason to collect an individual’s DNA. In about 865 of the nearly 2,000 cases involving U.S. citizens, no formal federal charges were ever filed, meaning those individuals never saw a judge or had the legality of their detention reviewed.
This expansion of genetic surveillance began with an April 2020 Justice Department rule that revoked a longstanding waiver allowing DHS to skip DNA collection from immigration detainees. Suddenly, mass sampling was green-lit. In the months that followed, the FBI approved rules allowing police booking stations to run arrestee cheek swabs through Rapid DNA machines—devices that can generate CODIS-ready profiles in under two hours. The result? A surge in DNA submissions: the FBI’s monthly intake skyrocketed from a few thousand to 92,000, creating a backlog of 650,000 unprocessed kits by 2023, according to former FBI director Christopher Wray’s Senate testimony.
The numbers are staggering. Since 2020, DHS has contributed roughly 2.6 million profiles to CODIS—97 percent collected under civil, not criminal, authority. By April 2025, the “detainee” index alone contained over 2.6 million profiles. Georgetown Law estimates that, at this pace, Homeland Security files could account for a third of CODIS by 2034. This mass expansion, critics argue, has fundamentally changed the nature of CODIS from a forensic tool for violent crime investigations to a sweeping surveillance archive capturing immigrants, travelers, and U.S. citizens alike.
Legal and ethical concerns abound. Senator Ron Wyden has pressed DHS and the Department of Justice for answers about why children’s DNA is being collected and whether CODIS has any mechanism to reject improperly obtained samples. “The program was never intended to collect and permanently retain the DNA of all noncitizens,” Wyden warned, “and the children are likely to be treated by law enforcement as suspects for every investigation of every future crime, indefinitely.” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has echoed these worries, warning that such practices erode trust in government and disproportionately affect vulnerable populations.
Meanwhile, defenders of the program argue that it enhances national security by aiding in the identification of criminals and missing persons. However, the inclusion of U.S. citizens in a database designed for criminal suspects complicates this justification. Federal officials have even solicited bids to install more Rapid DNA machines at local booking facilities, with up to $3 million in awards available, signaling the program’s likely expansion.
Oversight bodies have not been silent. As early as 2021, the DHS Inspector General found that the department lacked central oversight of DNA collection, and the Office of Special Counsel called CBP’s failures an “unacceptable dereliction.” Despite these warnings, the program has continued to grow, with Congress in 2025 granting DHS a $178 billion budget—making it the nation’s costliest law enforcement agency—even as the administration has been accused of gutting its civil rights watchdogs.
Rights advocates and legal groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the program and demanding greater transparency. Georgetown’s privacy center has also sued DHS over its refusal to fully release records about the program, arguing that the public has a right to know how their most intimate data is being used, stored, and shared. “We’ve had to sue the agencies just to get them to do their statutory duty, and even then they’ve flouted court orders,” Glaberson said. “The public has a right to know what its government is up to, and we’ll keep fighting to bring this program into the light.”
The implications are profound. DNA data can reveal not only information about an individual, but also their relatives—regardless of citizenship status. Stored in a criminal database, this information could subject people to investigations they would otherwise never be swept up in. As Glaberson put it, “If you think that your status as a citizen protects you from authoritarian practices, this is proof that it does not and will not.”
With lawsuits pending, congressional inquiries intensifying, and privacy experts sounding alarms, the debate over DNA collection at the border is far from settled. What is clear is that the expansion of government biometric surveillance has outpaced the legal and ethical frameworks designed to protect Americans’ rights—leaving many to wonder just how much privacy remains at the nation’s frontiers.
