Feds Build Massive DNA Vault — No Age Limit

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The federal government now holds DNA profiles from more than 3.3 million people, and a new rule could pull in millions more, including American citizens who never committed a crime.

Story Snapshot

Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy & Technology says the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has collected DNA from over 3.3 million people, with nearly 900,000 profiles added by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2025 alone.
Researchers say Customs and Border Protection (CBP) took DNA from more than 2,000 U.S. citizens between 2020 and 2024.
A new Federal Register proposal from November 2025 would let DHS collect DNA, including partial DNA profiles, from citizens and green card holders tied to immigration cases, with no age limit.
DHS says the collection follows a 2005 federal law and applies mainly to people in its custody, though an internal watchdog found the agency did not enforce the rule consistently.

A Program That Grew Far Past Its Original Purpose

DHS started collecting DNA from immigration detainees under a 2005 law aimed at tracking arrestees and convicts. Georgetown’s Center on Privacy & Technology says that narrow purpose has ballooned into something else entirely. Their report, “Raiding the Genome,” argues DHS now feeds a massive share of new profiles into the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) criminal DNA database, called CODIS, turning an immigration tool into a policing pipeline.

The numbers back up the concern. ICE alone added roughly 920,000 new DNA profiles in 2025, a staggering jump from where the program started. Once a profile lands in CODIS, it can be searched by police departments across the country, indefinitely, without a warrant. That’s not a footnote. That’s the entire ballgame for anyone worried about how far this data travels.

Citizens Caught in a Net Built for Immigration Enforcement

This isn’t just about people crossing the border illegally. Georgetown’s updated analysis found CBP knowingly swabbed more than 2,000 U.S. citizens between 2020 and 2024, based on records the group obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. A 25-year-old American citizen was among those whose genetic material ended up shared with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to reporting on the same dataset.

DHS’s own privacy paperwork admits the agency swabs cheeks of “those detained for some administrative immigration violations”. That phrase covers a lot of ground. Administrative violations are not crimes. Yet the DNA collected from someone in that position can end up in the same database used to solve murders and rapes, permanently, unless someone actively fights to have it removed.

A New Rule Would Widen the Door Even Further

DHS published a proposed rule in the Federal Register on November 3, 2025, that would let the agency “require, request, or accept” raw DNA or partial DNA profiles from a long list of people connected to immigration cases. That list includes applicants, sponsors, dependents, and beneficiaries, not just the immigrant at the center of a case. The rule drops age limits entirely, meaning children could be swabbed too.

The proposal also creates what DHS calls “continuous immigration vetting,” requiring biometrics whenever officers arrest, apprehend, or encounter someone in the system. Supporters frame this as modernizing identity verification and stopping fraud. But critics see a rule that quietly locks in mass DNA collection as standard practice, rather than an emergency exception for security threats.

DHS Says the Law Requires It, Records Say Enforcement Was Uneven

DHS points to a real legal foundation here. Federal law lets the Attorney General collect DNA from people who are “arrested, facing charges, or convicted,” and from non-citizens detained by federal authorities. DHS also says a separate familial DNA program, used to confirm parent-child relationships at the border, only compares two profiles and doesn’t reveal race, disease risk, or other sensitive traits.

But the agency’s own inspector general found DHS didn’t even follow its own rules consistently. Of five DHS law enforcement components reviewed, only the Secret Service reliably collected required DNA samples. Immigration and Customs Enforcement collected inconsistently, while Customs and Border Protection and the Transportation Security Administration collected none at all during the period reviewed. That’s not a small management gap. That’s a federal agency that couldn’t police its own DNA program before asking to expand it.

Why This Should Worry Every American, Not Just Immigrants

Conservatives have long argued the federal government oversteps when it treats every citizen like a suspect in waiting. This program fits that pattern closely. A system built to track people crossing the border illegally has quietly swept up thousands of American citizens, and a new rule would make that sweep official policy rather than an occasional error. Fraud prevention and border security are legitimate goals. Treating a parent, sponsor, or four-year-old child as a permanent entry in a criminal database is not a proportional way to reach them.

The public comment period on the proposed rule gives Americans a chance to push back before it becomes final. Given DHS’s own inspector general found the agency couldn’t manage the DNA program it already had, expanding that same program to millions more people, without age limits and without proven oversight, deserves hard questions rather than quiet approval.