ICE is collecting DNA from detainees for future policing

Summary

This Marketplace Tech episode examines how ICE and the broader Department of Homeland Security expanded DNA collection from detained immigrants, asylum seekers, and other detainees after a 2020 policy change. Stevie Gleiberson of the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology says DHS collected DNA from nearly a million people last year and sent profiles into the FBI’s CODIS database.

The source’s main contribution is a federal biometric-surveillance branch around Immigration DNA Database Expansion. It links immigration detention to durable criminal-policing infrastructure, because the profiles appear to be retained indefinitely, searched in future investigations, and able to implicate biological relatives through Genetic Lineup Privacy Risk.

Key Claims

• DHS became a large-scale DNA collector after a 2020 policy change allowed detainee samples to be sent to the FBI.
• Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology found that DHS collected DNA from nearly a million people last year.
• The source says DHS added about 3.3 million people’s DNA profiles to CODIS in recent years, against roughly 28 million total CODIS profiles accumulated over about 25 years.
• Georgetown’s analysis says federally detained people’s profiles rose from 0.21% of CODIS and could make up one-third of the database by 2030.
• Stevie Gleiberson says the profiles appear to be held indefinitely and that her organization has not found a regular review-and-removal process.
• The episode’s constitutional critique turns on Compelled DNA Sampling Fourth Amendment: people may be sampled because they are detained, not because they were criminally arrested on probable cause.
• Gleiberson distinguishes the program from Maryland v. King, where the Supreme Court considered DNA collection from people arrested on probable cause for serious crimes.
• DHS records described in the episode indicate DNA samples were taken from children younger than 14, including some as young as four, five, or six, despite a stated age threshold of 14 and older.
• Briggs v. Mullen is presented as the first court challenge known to Georgetown’s center, brought by U.S. citizens whose DNA was taken during Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago.

Key Quotes

“perpetual genetic lineup” - Gleiberson’s description of how CODIS inclusion can affect sampled people and biological relatives.

“one-third” - Georgetown’s projection for federally detained profiles’ potential share of CODIS by 2030.

Connections

• Marketplace Tech and Megan McCarty-Corino - show and host context.
• Stevie Gleiberson and Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology - guest and analysis source.
• U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ICE, FBI, and CODIS - agencies and database infrastructure.
• Immigration DNA Database Expansion, Genetic Lineup Privacy Risk, and Compelled DNA Sampling Fourth Amendment - main concepts introduced by this ingest.
• Fourth Amendment Digital Privacy, Civil Liberties Surveillance Risk, Enforcement Agency Data Sharing, and Immigration Detention Expansion - existing legal, surveillance, and detention branches extended by the episode.
• Maryland v. King and Briggs v. Mullen - precedent and active challenge framing the constitutional dispute.

Contradictions

• No settled contradiction found with existing wiki content.
• The episode’s strongest legal claim is source-scoped to Gleiberson and Georgetown’s analysis because the source does not include a detailed DHS, FBI, or DOJ defense.
• The child-sampling section records an apparent implementation conflict between a 14-and-older policy threshold and records indicating samples from younger children; the source does not independently resolve whether those were errors, exceptions, or systematic practice.