You may have only four years, but you are Migrante And you live in USA That is enough to be considered as a potential criminal.
The government of USA DNA has extracted more than 133,000 children and adolescents Immigrantsparticularly sensitive genetic data that stores in a database of criminals managed by him FBI to track them in the future in the event that they commit Crimes.
An investigation by Wired magazine reveals for the first time the scope of the controversial program with which the customs and border protection service of USA It collects the DNA of anyone who wants to enter the country. Between October 2020 and the end of 2024, samples of up to 2.8 million people would have been taken, a figure that includes up to 133,539 adolescents and children.
The border agencies that depend on the Department of National Security have permission to collect fingerprints and DNA of anyone who has entered the US without permission from the age of 14. However, Wired has detected 227 cases that affect boys and girls of 13 or less years. It has even been documented at least one case of an “immigrant without papers” of only four years of age.
GENETIC COLLECTION ACCELERATED WITH BIDEN
The data published by the Border Protection Agency shows that the extraction of genetic information of the migrant population shot during the presidency of Joe Bidenespecially in 2024, when the Democrat, first, and then vice president Kamala Harrislater, they were in full electoral campaign against Donald Trump. Wired documents that in just one January a police office in Texas sent up to 3,930 DNA samples to the FBI. In that year the arrests On the border.
A group of migrants crosses Rio Grande, near the border between the US and Mexico. / Alfredo Estrella / AFP
The Department of Justice ensures that the biometric surveillance of migrants allows “evaluating their danger.” The database in which all the genetic information collected on the border is stored serves the local, state and federal order forces when investigating and resolving violent crimes, sexual aggressions and cases of missing persons. Thus, the DNA extracted from the crime zone rises to the base of the FBI – in which the genetic data of detained or convicted persons also appears – and compares to be able to identify suspects, connect without resolving cases or sharing clues between police bodies.
Legal threat and privacy
However, multiple legal experts, in immigration and in privacy They have denounced in statements to Wired that it is a “terribly dystopic” program and have warned that this data network could be used to prepare detailed profiles about the foreigners that reside legally or illegally in the US. “It’s not that we can’t solve crimes by collecting these samples: that’s what the Codis exists for [nombre del programa]and it is a wonderful tool, “he explains to Sara Huston magazine, an expert in genomic policy and principal investigator of the Genetics and Justice Laboratory.” But it is not a fair system to keep the DNA of people who have not committed crimes assuming that they are likely to commit it. “
Of the total minors registered by this controversial project, up to 122 were classified as US citizens, 53 of which were not arrested for any crime, according to the agency.
