ICE Collected Nearly 1 Million People’s DNA Last Year—Including Young Children

On March 13, 2025, Hugo Moreno-Mendez arrived astatine the McLennan County Probation Department successful Waco, Texas, expecting a regular probation check-in. Instead, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were waiting to apprehension him.

According to a transgression ailment reviewed by WIRED, officers drove Moreno-Mendez to a adjacent ICE tract office. There, 1 deportation serviceman aft different approached him with the aforesaid demand.

Open your mouth.

One serviceman tried to instrumentality his fingerprints and swab the wrong of his feature for DNA. He refused. Then different tried. Then a third. Each time, Moreno-Mendez refused.

Four days later, Moreno-Mendez was charged with failing to registry arsenic a noncitizen and refusing to supply DNA portion successful national custody—the second a misdemeanor that, arsenic of 2021, ICE itself said it was unaware had ever been accepted for prosecution.

Moreno-Mendez took some counts to trial. On August 18, 2025, a magistrate justice successful Waco recovered him blameworthy of each and sentenced him to clip served.

Moreno-Mendez’s lawsuit is portion of a sweeping enlargement of DNA postulation from radical held for civilian migration violations—a national run that, backed by the menace of prosecution, funnels the familial profiles of astir everyone successful ICE custody into an FBI database built for transgression investigations. New probe from Georgetown Law's Center connected Privacy and Technology estimates that the Department of Homeland Security has go the largest azygous root of caller familial profiles successful the nation's transgression DNA system, with ICE unsocial perchance adding arsenic galore arsenic astir 920,000 profiles successful 2025.

The immense bulk of radical successful ICE custody person nary transgression conviction, and residing successful the US undocumented is typically a civil, not criminal, offense. Yet erstwhile the DNA profiles of detained radical participate the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, oregon CODIS, instrumentality enforcement agencies crossed the state tin comparison them against grounds from unsolved crimes—and against crime-scene DNA collected years oregon adjacent decades from now. The carnal sample, which holds a person's full genome, sits successful a national laboratory indefinitely.

The enlargement of DNA postulation has extended to families held successful migration detention, sparked lawsuits implicit the postulation of DNA from protesters and others who allege they should ne'er person been subjected to the program, and drawn legislature scrutiny aft lawmakers learned that children were being swabbed astatine a household detention halfway successful Dilley, Texas.

“None of the families astatine Dilley person been convicted of a crime,” US representatives Joaquin Castro, Greg Stanton, and Nanette Barragán said successful a associated connection to WIRED. “They bash not beryllium successful a database meant for convulsive criminals, particularly children.”

In effect to questions from WIRED, a DHS spokesperson defended DNA postulation arsenic a border-security and recognition measure, saying CBP takes samples from radical arrested connected national charges and from detained noncitizens who are taxable to fingerprinting and not different exempt. Asked astir children whose profiles were submitted to CODIS, DHS pointed to a abstracted DNA-testing programme utilized to verify household relationships. That programme is chiseled from the postulation astatine the halfway of WIRED’s reporting. DHS did not code Georgetown’s estimation that ICE whitethorn person added hundreds of thousands of profiles to CODIS successful 2025.

For astir of the program's history, migrant DNA postulation played retired astatine the border, wherever Customs and Border Protection swabbed radical it took into custody. ICE's ain publication was marginal. Internal grooming slides obtained by Georgetown done the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) amusement ICE collected 3,609 DNA samples successful fiscal twelvemonth 2020 and 16,392 much done mid-May of fiscal 2021—roughly 20,000 successful all. CBP was operating connected a antithetic standard entirely: Agency spreadsheets Georgetown obtained and analyzed amusement it sent the FBI the DNA of astatine slightest 1.36 cardinal radical betwixt October 2020 and the extremity of 2024, much than a twelve times ICE's complaint during the aforesaid clip period.

Georgetown's caller study suggests the programme entered an wholly antithetic signifier successful 2025. FBI records amusement the "detainee" scale of CODIS—the sub-index wherever DHS-collected profiles are stored—reached 3,345,692 profiles by December 2025, increasing by astir 995,000 that twelvemonth alone. That is much than 2,700 radical a day, each day, for a year.