ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
ICE collected nearly 1 million DNA profiles in 2025, including children as young as 4, for the FBI criminal database.
A WIRED investigation details how ICE dramatically expanded DNA collection from civil immigration detainees, sending profiles to CODIS. Georgetown Law estimates ICE added 920,000 profiles in 2025. Children as young as 4 were swabbed. An ICE attorney wrote the program's primary purpose is solving crimes, not identification. Two people were prosecuted for refusing to provide DNA. Families at the Dilley detention center reported confusion about testing.
Critics argue the program violates the Fourth Amendment by collecting sensitive data without suspicion. Lawsuits have been filed by U.S. citizens whose DNA was taken during protests and an Army veteran detained at a cannabis farm. DHS defended the collection as a border-security measure and said it follows federal law.
What commenters are saying
Commenters were deeply skeptical of the program. Many argued that even well-intentioned government databases inevitably lead to abuse or mission creep. Several pointed out that large-scale DNA matching produces false positives-one cited the 1 in 333 chance of a coincidental match when searching a 300M-profile database. A correction noted that European countries do not maintain population-wide DNA databases at birth, contradicting an earlier claim. Two camps emerged: those saying a perfect system could be useful but is unattainable, and those arguing perfect enforcement is itself undesirable. The Phantom of Heilbronn case was cited as a cautionary tale about contaminated evidence.