DHS Has Been Collecting US Citizens' DNA for Years

"The expansion has been driven by specific legal and bureaucratic levers. Foremost was an April 2020 Justice Department rule that revoked a long-standing waiver allowing DHS to skip DNA collection from immigration detainees, effectively green-lighting mass sampling. Later that summer, the FBI signed off on rules that let police booking stations run arrestee cheek swabs through Rapid DNA machines-automated devices that can spit out CODIS-ready profiles in under two hours."

"Former FBI director Christopher Wray warned during Senate testimony in 2023 that the flood of DNA samples from DHS threatened to overwhelm the bureau's systems. The 2020 rule change, he said, had pushed the FBI from a historic average of a few thousand monthly submissions to 92,000 per month-over 10 times its traditional intake. The surge, he cautioned, had created a backlog of roughly 650,000 unprocessed kits, raising the risk that people detained by DHS could be released before DNA checks produced investigative leads."

""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. "In 2025, Congress handed DHS a $178 billion check, making it the nation's costliest law enforcement agency, even as the president gutted its civil rights watchdogs and the Supreme Court repeatedly signed off on unconstitutional ta"

Specific legal and bureaucratic changes expanded DNA collection and automated processing. An April 2020 Justice Department rule revoked a waiver that had allowed DHS to skip DNA collection from immigration detainees, enabling mass sampling. The FBI approved rules permitting arrestee cheek swabs to be processed through Rapid DNA machines that produce CODIS-ready profiles in under two hours. Sample volumes surged, pushing monthly submissions from a few thousand to 92,000 and creating a backlog of roughly 650,000 unprocessed kits. A January 2025 executive order directed DHS to deploy "any available technologies," including genetic testing, and solicitations now fund Rapid DNA installations. Critics warn of civil liberties and processing risks.

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