A new report from the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law finds that the government regularly violates federal law by knowingly taking DNA from U.S. citizens, without authority to do so.
Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: September 23, 2025
CONTACT : Katie Evans, [email protected] , (202) 662-9879
WASHINGTON, DC — Today, the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law released an update to its 2024 report, Raiding the Genome, which documented the drastic expansion of the federal government’s unconstitutional DNA collection program. The update, Raiding the (U.S. Citizen) Genome, analyzes records CBP released in response to a Privacy Center FOIA request and finds that CBP has knowingly taken DNA from U.S. citizens on a regular basis, with over 2,000 samples taken from citizens between 2020 and 2024. CBP is taking DNA without the approval or oversight of any independent magistrate, and sending it to the FBI to be uploaded to a national database, the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), where it is searchable by policing agencies all over the country. The Privacy Center’s 2024 report argued that DHS’s entire DNA collection program violates the 4th Amendment. But what this new information reveals is that CBP is transgressing the very statute that gives it DNA collecting authority as well as the limits the agency itself has said apply to that authority.
The following quote can be attributed to Stevie Glaberson , report author and the Center on Privacy & Technology’s Director of Research & Advocacy:
« When we published Raiding the Genome in 2024, we knew this program was a constitutional abomination and that it risked sweeping in U.S. citizens erroneously and impacting them indirectly. We didn’t know that DHS would regularly, brazenly abuse its statutory authority to illegally capture the DNA of hundreds of U.S. citizens. This is one very concrete example of what we all know to be true: what we allow to happen to vulnerable communities harms us all. We all need to stand up to stop these abuses, before it is too late. »
The following quote can be attributed to Emerald Tse, report author and Associate at the Center on Privacy & Technology:
« The revelation that DHS is regularly and knowingly taking DNA from U.S. citizens should be a concern to everyone. DHS’s program to create widespread genetic surveillance worsens already-harmful racialized policing practices, which do not discriminate based on legal status. »
Today’s report highlights several troubling individual stories from the CBP data, as well as the lack of any clear principle, legal or otherwise, governing the decisions CBP agents make about whether to take a person’s DNA. The reasons CBP agents recorded as justification for taking U.S. citizens’ DNA were often legally questionable, nonsensical, or altogether absent. CBP did not even attempt to justify taking DNA from approximately 40 individuals.
The following quote can be attributed to Emily Tucker, report author and the Center on Privacy & Technology’s Executive Director:
« Given what these records reveal about the recklessness and lawlessness of CBP’s DNA collection program, it is important for every person who crosses the border to be prepared for the possibility that, no matter what their immigration status, CBP might decide to detain them and compel them to give a DNA sample. »
To download the full report, visit: www.raidingthegenome.org.
To schedule an interview with the authors, please contact:
Katie Evans, Deputy Director
(202) 662-9879 (desk)
Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law
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