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ICE Collected Nearly 1M People's DNA Last Year–Including Young Children
- b3ing 2mo ago[flagged]
- throwaway2027 2mo ago[flagged]
- zombot 2mo agoMaybe they'll discover the illegal-immigrant gene or the unwanted-wrongthinker gene.
- baggachipz 2mo agoThey have, it's called "skin tint".
- sieabahlpark 2mo ago[dead]
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- voidUpdate 2mo agoIF there was a secure and trustable way that a trusted government could retain DNA information, then I feel like people having a DNA test at birth or on becoming a citizen could be useful, both medically ("your sample indicates you may have a higher risk of dementia") and from a policing standpoint ("we found DNA on this woman's clothes and immediately matched it to this man who hasn't committed a crime before" or "we were able to identify this john doe because their DNA was on record"). However, given that companies and governments are awful, I don't think it could ever actually work in practice :/
- sidewndr46 2mo agoThere are several European countries that do this from what I understand
- hvb2 2mo agoDo what, fingerprinting or collecting DNA? Not sure what you're trying to say, if Europe does it, it's fine? The gist is that this was always done when people were arrested for criminal offences. They're now doing it for civil offences and, like with all the ICE stuff, it seems to be do first, ask questions later. So you can be a citizen but your data might end up in their systems anyway as it's submitted before they find out you are a citizen...
- spwa4 2mo agoA few things we can know for sure. The Dutch immigration enforcement authority, IND, has a blanket exception for to the GPDR collecting any kind of information on anybody "for the purposes of immigration enforcement". 10 years ago we found out, from a budget proposal that was in dispute, that the police had sent every mental health database in the Netherlands to Palantir. Regular health databases too, but if you're Dutch, Peter Thiel knows exactly what you told the "the law guarantees you can trust me" social worker 20 years ago. Or what you told any Dutch police officer at the border, on the street, ... Everything. That's what the Dutch state used their authority for.
- microtonal 2mo agoAs far as I know the IND only gives the option for a DNA test (voluntary choice), if as a refugee you want to let your family come over to prove that someone is actually your family. This is not great, but faked familial ties have been used in the past to get people into the country. Also, the DNA test is not done by the IND, but by the NFI (Dutch Forensic Institute), who destroy the material after six months. sidewndr46 had a pretty grandiose claim (I don't think there are any European countries that do a DNA test at birth and store the data) and you only come with a lot of handwaving that is not even about DNA.
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- CurbStomper 2mo ago[dead]
- kardianos 2mo agoThey don't mention this, but one major reason for this is to validate claims of family units and prevent trafficking. This is, I suspect, a good thing. The article never states any downsides, other then nebulous claims. Yes, DNA is like finger printing someone, which is routinely done for arrests, but has the benefit of assisting in claims of family relations, which is at the heart of many ICE concerns.
- jackmott42 2mo ago[flagged]
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- taway3564635 2mo ago[dead]
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- jackb4040 2mo agoThey don't mention this, but one major reason for apartheid's Bantustan policy was to recognize distinct homelands and preserve cultural communities. This is, I suspect, a good thing. The article never states any downsides, other than nebulous claims. Yes, assigning people to ethnic homelands is like any other government record-keeping, which is routinely done, but has the benefit of assisting in claims of separate national identities, which was at the heart of many apartheid concerns.
- effnorwood 2mo ago[dead]
- ck2 2mo agowe're officially in the "just try to stop us" phase of authoritarianism next up, armed ICE around voting locations despite federal law because "just try to stop us" then refusal to seat voted delegates because "just try to stop us" the idea is to normalize the obscenity of it all, like the billions in wildly illegal grifting king's image on buildings, airports, passports, park passes, coins and $250 bill whitehouse demolished, fights on front lawn, statues covered in gold while people can't get healthcare or even food people arrested and prosecuted at great expense then quietly dismissed all normalized somehow without mass outrage
- functionmouse 2mo agoI mean, are YOU going to try to stop them?
- alistairSH 2mo agoLike Susan Collins, I shall furrow my brow to indicate my unease with the situation. Kidding, sort of, if brownshirts and other government-sanctioned thugs show up in November, I'm really not sure what I'll do. They're already making noise about doing extra "Watching" of elections in my area (Fairfax County) and as far as I can tell, the only criteria for that is "they vote blue, so it must be fraud!"
- jackb4040 2mo agoIt's a dumb question anyways. What any individual will do to resist is determined by the existence of a social movement, or lack thereof. You don't have to be willing to sacrifice your life or freedom in vain to contribute to that movement. It's a cynical framing by people who have been propagandized into hating nearly-powerless activists more than than the state, or even just support the state outright.
- scarecrowbob 1mo agoPeople write stuff like this and get all pissy when I say yes, and that we have been doing this work for a long time. Then get all righteous and start talking about democracy and then no-true-scotsman all the actual things folks do to curtail the actions of the state. It's wild, but the flip side is that since I am on that side of things I have a much better picture of what it might actually be possible when folks understand that the ethical choices aren't available via a ballot line. I wish I believed voting worked even a little. A lot of folks might take that sentiment to believe that since the only 'real and adult' politics comes about from voting we simply abstain out of apathy. For me, the sentiment is a lot closer to "I wish I thought I could just vote instead of all the other weird political things that I end up doing".
- lorreyfum 2mo ago[flagged]
- alistairSH 2mo agoWhen who breaks more laws?
- tremon 2mo agoThe babies, obviously.
- lenerdenator 2mo agoThis behavior will continue until an actual consequence is introduced.
- gdilla 1mo agoAmerica voted for this.
- torment-nexus 2mo ago[flagged]
- thrownatives 2mo ago[flagged]
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- pavlov 2mo agoThere’s a reason why Germany has extremely strict laws about how personally identifying information can be collected and stored. America has yet to learn the same lesson, but has been on the road there for a decade now.
- wildfireday2 1mo ago[flagged]
- fourspacetabs 1mo ago> foreign CRIMINALS Subheadline of the article: > Now hundreds of thousands of people never convicted of a crime are in an FBI criminal database forever. 7th paragraph of the article: > The vast majority of people in ICE custody have no criminal conviction, and residing in the US undocumented is typically a civil, not criminal, offense.
- wildfireday2 1mo agoThe first real example it opens with, is a criminal. For the rest of ICE detainees, don’t care. Again, we have 10s of millions of backlog of illegal entries, overstays, visa violations etc. No one knows how many 10s of millions, but it is eight figures worth. Most of the illegal entries we have essentially no way of getting or knowing who they are. Collecting their biometrics to include DNA that might be found at future crime scenes is a bare minimum. Likewise as others have pointed out collecting family members or children’s DNA is essential for dealing with rampant trafficking.
- Freedumbs 1mo agoICE are killing 1 person per week this year. They've tried to game that number down by releasing people as they're about to die from custody. This is a large well organized semi-military force with the backing of the state ($ Billions) literally terrorizing and killing people. They are clearly trafficking humans. If I had to guess, you consume a lot of entertainment media.
- andrewclunn 2mo agoFraming things as protecting children from predators, corporations, governments, etc... seems to always be the justification given for and against any measure directed at them. Child trafficking is real. Governments are already moving toward age verification online. Most people seem to legitimately only care about privacy or children's protection when it serves as a bludgeoning tool for "their team." Consider me sufficiently jaded on this issue.
- aliasxneo 1mo ago> Agency spreadsheets Georgetown obtained and analyzed show it sent the FBI the DNA of at least 1.36 million people between October 2020 and the end of 2024, more than a dozen times ICE's rate during the same time period. So at the same time we saw a mass increase in border crossings we were also collecting their DNA? That's a huge number.
- penguin_booze 1mo agoUnless ICE was also collecting young children, it should say: "... including that of young children".
- thrance 1mo agoI mean, they have been collecting young children.