FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 3, 2025
Contact: American for Immigrant Justice, [email protected]
MIAMI, FL (June 3, 2025) — The Georgetown Center on Privacy and Technology, together with Amica Center for Immigrants Rights and Americans for Immigrant Justice, have filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for its failure to respond to organizations’ Freedom of Information Act request seeking information about how DHS collects, stores, and uses noncitizen DNA samples. Since 2020, DHS has engaged in the massive collection of non-citizen DNA, increasing the FBI’s DNA database (CODIS) at an unprecedented rate of over 5,000 percent. The three organizations filed a joint FOIA request in the summer of 2024 to uncover how the agency is collecting, storing, and using non-citizen DNA data—little to none of which the agency discloses to the public.
After waiting over nine months without receiving a meaningful response to their FOIA request, the three organizations filed a lawsuit in the District of Columbia.
This information comes at a critical moment in national immigration policy, where the administration is routinely carrying out enforcement actions—including detention and deportation—against non-citizens without regard for their lawful presence in the United States. The mass collection of such deeply personal information, often under coercive and legally ambiguous circumstances, is also disproportionately aimed at people of color.
Co-counsel and organizational plaintiffs provided the following statements:
Stevie Glaberson, Director of Research and Advocacy for the Privacy Center, said:
“The Department of Homeland Security has built out a massive DNA-collection program, quickly becoming the primary contributor of DNA profiles to the nation’s criminal policing DNA database, CODIS. DHS is doing so despite collecting DNA from people accused of no crime and while operating with none of the constraints that are supposed to be in place before the government compels someone to give over their most sensitive personal information. Americans deserve visibility on the details of this program and the department’s lack of transparency is unacceptable.”
Emily Tucker, the Executive Director at the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law:
“It would be a mistake to think of what the administration is doing as immigration enforcement. To the contrary, Trump is using immigration powers as the vehicle for the activities of a militarized police force, a weapon he can wield broadly and violently without having to navigate obstacles in the form of transparency, accountability or oversight. The Department’s DNA-collection program is one piece of a massive dragnet that sweeps in information about all of us not just to fuel deportation–although it does–but primarily to intimidate and silence those who would oppose him. We’re filing this lawsuit in the hopes to, at the very least, chip away at the obscurity in which this administration is carrying out its most dangerous programs.”
Daniel Melo, senior attorney, Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, said:
“As immigration enforcement agencies continue to deploy sophisticated tools to target, surveil, and arbitrarily detain non-citizens, the community most impacted by these policy choices has a right to know how, when, and why genetic material is being taken, stored, and used against non-citizens—potentially indefinitely—simply because they were not born in the United States.”
Christina LaRocca, Litigation Staff Attorney, Americans for Immigrant Justice, said:
“Secretive government surveillance programs, like the widescale and unprecedented program to collect and store noncitizen DNA, are a threat to freedom and safety for citizens and noncitizens alike. The Freedom of Information Act demands that the government act openly. When the government attempts to ignore this demand, Americans for Immigrant Justice is committed to pursuing transparency and accountability.”
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About Americans for Immigrant Justice
Americans for Immigrant Justice (AI Justice) is an award-winning non-profit law firm that fights for justice for immigrants through a combination of direct representation, impact litigation, advocacy and outreach. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Visit www.aijustice.org.