Latest news with #migrantchildren
CNN
9 hours ago
- Health
- CNN
Trump administration takes hundreds of migrant children out of their homes, into government custody
The Trump administration is taking hundreds of migrant children already residing in the United States out of their homes and into government custody, at times separating them from their families and making it more difficult for them to be released, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. President Donald Trump and his top aides have repeatedly cited the influx of children who arrived at the US southern border under the Biden administration without a parent or guardian as a critique of his predecessor and his handling of border security. Trump officials argue that hundreds of thousands of those children went unaccounted for — and are in potentially dangerous situations. While former Biden officials contend that the surge of kids in 2021 placed tremendous pressure on the federal system, they and several experts in the field refute claims that there are large numbers of children missing from the system. Still, the notion that there are thousands of such children has served as the impetus for a major campaign by the Trump administration to set up a makeshift 'war room' to pore over sensitive data and deploy federal authorities to children's homes nationwide. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has taken around 500 children into government custody following so-called welfare checks since Trump returned to the White House, according to three sources familiar with the matter, either because their situations were deemed unsafe or because of immigration enforcement actions against sponsors, the majority of whom are the kids' parents or other family members. That number is more than previously known and an unprecedented departure from previous years when such occurrences were rare. The FBI has been involved in some of the welfare checks, frustrating some at the bureau who expressed concerns that the effort is more targeted at finding children's relatives who law enforcement otherwise has no pretext to investigate or arrest, according to a law enforcement official. An FBI spokesperson confirmed in a statement that the agency is assisting other agencies in conducting welfare checks on migrant children. 'Protecting children is a critical mission for the FBI and we will continue to work with our federal, state, and local partners to secure their safety and well-being,' the spokesperson said. The administration has also put in place additional vetting procedures that have made it all-but-impossible for some parents and guardians to retrieve children in government custody, according to advocates, experts and former Health and Human Services officials. 'They're trying to suffocate the program, which only hurts the children we're statutorily and legally mandated to serve,' one source familiar with the discussions told CNN. Migrant children who arrive in the US alone are placed into the care of a federal agency within the Health and Human Services Department, known as the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which operates shelters nationwide to house kids until they can be released to a parent or guardian sponsor already residing in the United States. Currently, there are more than 2,500 children in the custody of ORR, according to federal data. Migrant children are also staying in government custody much longer on average than they were previously. Internally, agency officials have acknowledged that children may languish in facilities amid new policy guidelines making it harder to release kids to people in the US. They've also discussed the toll it's taking on children in custody, some of whom are reporting that they're depressed, according to a source familiar with discussions. In Trump's first term, his administration sparked controversy by separating families at the US southern border as part of its 'zero tolerance' policy. In this term, children are being removed from sponsors, many of whom are family members, over potential wellbeing concerns. But advocates, experts and former Health and Human Services officials point to post-release services and programs already in place to check in on children. They warn the latest actions by the administration stand to hurt, not help, children. Trump officials maintain the steps they've taken are for the safety of the children and are necessary ones, casting the Biden administration's handling of migrant children as scrambled and mishandled. 'DHS is leading efforts to conduct welfare checks on these children to ensure they are safe and not being exploited. These welfare checks have resulted in arrests of some sponsors of these unaccompanied minors and as a result the children have been placed in the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) custody,' Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. The Department of Homeland Security cited two examples in a statement, including a Guatemalan migrant with a criminal record who was approved to care for a 14-year-old family member in 2023, and a man who arranged for a child to be smuggled into the US and transported to Virginia at a steep cost. DHS didn't provide additional details on the cases. Health and Human Services Department spokesperson Andrew Nixon told CNN in a statement that ORR is 'restoring' the agency's mission, claiming that it was 'abandoned' under the previous administration. 'Let's be clear: no child should ever be placed with someone who can't meet basic safety standards. If it's 'impossible' for a sponsor to clear those standards, then they have no business caring for a child,' Nixon said. A 2024 Health and Human Services inspector general report identified some vulnerabilities in the ORR release process, finding that while ORR 'generally conducted all steps for sponsor screening for most children' in their sample, 16 percent of cases lacked documentation that safety checks were done. Dozens of children who were released to sponsors have been visited at their homes by immigration enforcement officers who, upon arriving, have asked the kids a range of questions, according to legal service providers who work with them. Topics have included their journey to the US southern border, school attendance and immigration hearings. While there have been cases of trafficking and extortion of unaccompanied children that have been documented, the approach — sending an immigration enforcement officer, instead of a child welfare expert — to check in on kids is concerning to providers who work with children. 'It's scaring people, and it's unnecessary,' said Laura Nally, program director of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights Children's Program, referring to the way the administration was conducting it's check ins. Migrant children already go through multiple steps before being released to a person, like a parent or relative in the United States, who has been thoroughly vetted. In recent years, the agency charged with their care has expanded post-release services to check on children after they leave government custody. 'What the post release services do is provide help when children and their sponsors need help with school enrollment, health needs, links to other services in the community,' said Mark Greenberg, a former senior HHS official who served multiple administrations. The post-release service provider is also directed to alert any concerns to child welfare authorities or law enforcement authorities as appropriate, Greenberg said. 'To the extent the goal is to determine children are in danger or in need of help, this isn't a good way to go about doing that because it places children in a situation where they have to be fearful that anything they say could be used against their parent or family member,' he added, referring to the ICE welfare checks. A family who went to a US Citizenship and Immigration Services office for a routine appointment was picked up by ICE—the parents were taken into ICE custody, while their three young children were taken into ORR custody, according to a source familiar with the incident. In another instance, a child was in the passenger seat of a vehicle during a traffic stop and was sent back into ORR custody, the source said. 'We're seeing the warning signs right now,' Nally said. 'There's a concern that these welfare check ins could turn into the mass detention of sponsors and mass return of kids to ORR.' Experts say it's unusual for children to be swiftly sent back into ORR custody, but their concerns extend beyond that, arguing that additional guidelines for releases make it more difficult for those kids to leave custody again and fast-track deportation proceedings could put them at risk of removal. The average length of care for children in custody has jumped from 67 days in December 2024 to 170 days in April 2025 as guidelines to release kids have become more stringent. Under Trump, the agency has placed additional checks on sponsors that include income requirements, stringent ID requirements and DNA tests. Those steps, which are layered on top of already-existing background checks, are particularly chilling for sponsors who are undocumented, which is often the case, former HHS officials say. A recent lawsuit argued that 'collectively, these policy changes have resulted in children across the country being separated from their loving families, while the government denies their release, unnecessarily prolonging their detention.' The guidelines have halted reunifications that were already set to take place for children in government custody. Two brothers, ages 7 and 14, were detained at a transitional foster care program in California. They have not been able to be released 'to their mother because she's been is unable to provide documents required' as part of the new policy guidance, according to the lawsuit. 'The steps that they have taken are ones that are not about child safety but rather about making it more difficult or impossible for undocumented parents and relatives to be able to be united or reunited with a child,' Greenberg told CNN. Within days of Trump taking office, a conference room in the Health and Human Services Department's Washington, DC, headquarters was transformed into a 'war room' for the purpose of tracking down migrant children, according to multiple sources. That room has become the centralized place where multiple federal agencies have gathered to pore over sensitive data about children who crossed the US southern border alone and share that information with the Department of Homeland Security. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited the war room last month to get briefed on the work there, according to one of the sources. According to multiple sources, Immigration and Customs Enforcement now has access to the Office of Refugee Resettlement portal, which contains sensitive information about children, including the basis for their immigration relief, like asylum, details about their sponsor placement and protected medical information. ORR has been responsible for unaccompanied migrant children for more than two decades, since former President George W. Bush signed legislation moving the care of kids out of an immigration enforcement agency. The agency's mandate is to place children 'in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child,' usually with a family member. In the early days of the Trump administration, the White House moved a senior ICE official, Melissa Harper, to oversee ORR, sending a message that, like his first term, immigration enforcement would be folded into an agency primarily focused on child welfare, according to three sources familiar with the matter. 'The message was clear that this was going to be a very enforcement-oriented regime and almost immediately people were being questioned and prodded on what was being done to protect children from traffickers, what was done to ensure children weren't released to dangerous sponsors,' said Mary Giovagnoli, who led ORR's ombudsman's office before she was terminated last month. Harper's short tenure — the outcome of internal disagreements, sources familiar said—later paved the way for Angie Salazar to take the helm. According to sources, Salazar, who also came from ICE, talks to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller frequently and has directed agency officials to quickly approve policy changes. Trump officials haven't provided evidence for their contention that hundreds of thousands of children are unaccounted for but appear to be basing that on a Homeland Security inspector general report stating that nearly 300,000 unaccompanied migrant children were not given notices to appear in court. That, however, doesn't mean they're missing, according to former officials. The DHS IG last August found that ICE didn't serve notices to appear, a document that instructs people to appear before an immigration judge, to more than 291,000 children. But it didn't explain whether that was, for example, a capacity issue or because addresses were missing. In a House panel hearing in May, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told lawmakers, 'President Trump has made it a priority of every Cabinet secretary and agency to make sure those children are located, that they're returned to safety. … The refugee program and sponsors were greatly abused in the previous administrations. The department of HHS is bringing some integrity back to the program.' Jen Smyers, a former ORR deputy director who served under Biden, told CNN that rushing is never appropriate, but that there are multiple checks sponsors have to go through to ensure quality control. 'There was rigorous vetting of all sponsors,' Smyers said, adding that sponsors went through Justice Department public records checks and sex offender registry checks. 'There's a difference between the vetting and what happens afterward. No amount of vetting is a predictor of the future.'
CNN
9 hours ago
- General
- CNN
Trump administration takes hundreds of migrant children out of their homes, into government custody
The Trump administration is taking hundreds of migrant children already residing in the United States out of their homes and into government custody, at times separating them from their families and making it more difficult for them to be released, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. President Donald Trump and his top aides have repeatedly cited the influx of children who arrived at the US southern border under the Biden administration without a parent or guardian as a critique of his predecessor and his handling of border security. Trump officials argue that hundreds of thousands of those children went unaccounted for — and are in potentially dangerous situations. While former Biden officials contend that the surge of kids in 2021 placed tremendous pressure on the federal system, they and several experts in the field refute claims that there are large numbers of children missing from the system. Still, the notion that there are thousands of such children has served as the impetus for a major campaign by the Trump administration to set up a makeshift 'war room' to pore over sensitive data and deploy federal authorities to children's homes nationwide. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has taken around 500 children into government custody following so-called welfare checks since Trump returned to the White House, according to three sources familiar with the matter, either because their situations were deemed unsafe or because of immigration enforcement actions against sponsors, the majority of whom are the kids' parents or other family members. That number is more than previously known and an unprecedented departure from previous years when such occurrences were rare. The FBI has been involved in some of the welfare checks, frustrating some at the bureau who expressed concerns that the effort is more targeted at finding children's relatives who law enforcement otherwise has no pretext to investigate or arrest, according to a law enforcement official. An FBI spokesperson confirmed in a statement that the agency is assisting other agencies in conducting welfare checks on migrant children. 'Protecting children is a critical mission for the FBI and we will continue to work with our federal, state, and local partners to secure their safety and well-being,' the spokesperson said. The administration has also put in place additional vetting procedures that have made it all-but-impossible for some parents and guardians to retrieve children in government custody, according to advocates, experts and former Health and Human Services officials. 'They're trying to suffocate the program, which only hurts the children we're statutorily and legally mandated to serve,' one source familiar with the discussions told CNN. Migrant children who arrive in the US alone are placed into the care of a federal agency within the Health and Human Services Department, known as the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which operates shelters nationwide to house kids until they can be released to a parent or guardian sponsor already residing in the United States. Currently, there are more than 2,500 children in the custody of ORR, according to federal data. Migrant children are also staying in government custody much longer on average than they were previously. Internally, agency officials have acknowledged that children may languish in facilities amid new policy guidelines making it harder to release kids to people in the US. They've also discussed the toll it's taking on children in custody, some of whom are reporting that they're depressed, according to a source familiar with discussions. In Trump's first term, his administration sparked controversy by separating families at the US southern border as part of its 'zero tolerance' policy. In this term, children are being removed from sponsors, many of whom are family members, over potential wellbeing concerns. But advocates, experts and former Health and Human Services officials point to post-release services and programs already in place to check in on children. They warn the latest actions by the administration stand to hurt, not help, children. Trump officials maintain the steps they've taken are for the safety of the children and are necessary ones, casting the Biden administration's handling of migrant children as scrambled and mishandled. 'DHS is leading efforts to conduct welfare checks on these children to ensure they are safe and not being exploited. These welfare checks have resulted in arrests of some sponsors of these unaccompanied minors and as a result the children have been placed in the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) custody,' Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. The Department of Homeland Security cited two examples in a statement, including a Guatemalan migrant with a criminal record who was approved to care for a 14-year-old family member in 2023, and a man who arranged for a child to be smuggled into the US and transported to Virginia at a steep cost. DHS didn't provide additional details on the cases. Health and Human Services Department spokesperson Andrew Nixon told CNN in a statement that ORR is 'restoring' the agency's mission, claiming that it was 'abandoned' under the previous administration. 'Let's be clear: no child should ever be placed with someone who can't meet basic safety standards. If it's 'impossible' for a sponsor to clear those standards, then they have no business caring for a child,' Nixon said. A 2024 Health and Human Services inspector general report identified some vulnerabilities in the ORR release process, finding that while ORR 'generally conducted all steps for sponsor screening for most children' in their sample, 16 percent of cases lacked documentation that safety checks were done. Dozens of children who were released to sponsors have been visited at their homes by immigration enforcement officers who, upon arriving, have asked the kids a range of questions, according to legal service providers who work with them. Topics have included their journey to the US southern border, school attendance and immigration hearings. While there have been cases of trafficking and extortion of unaccompanied children that have been documented, the approach — sending an immigration enforcement officer, instead of a child welfare expert — to check in on kids is concerning to providers who work with children. 'It's scaring people, and it's unnecessary,' said Laura Nally, program director of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights Children's Program, referring to the way the administration was conducting it's check ins. Migrant children already go through multiple steps before being released to a person, like a parent or relative in the United States, who has been thoroughly vetted. In recent years, the agency charged with their care has expanded post-release services to check on children after they leave government custody. 'What the post release services do is provide help when children and their sponsors need help with school enrollment, health needs, links to other services in the community,' said Mark Greenberg, a former senior HHS official who served multiple administrations. The post-release service provider is also directed to alert any concerns to child welfare authorities or law enforcement authorities as appropriate, Greenberg said. 'To the extent the goal is to determine children are in danger or in need of help, this isn't a good way to go about doing that because it places children in a situation where they have to be fearful that anything they say could be used against their parent or family member,' he added, referring to the ICE welfare checks. A family who went to a US Citizenship and Immigration Services office for a routine appointment was picked up by ICE—the parents were taken into ICE custody, while their three young children were taken into ORR custody, according to a source familiar with the incident. In another instance, a child was in the passenger seat of a vehicle during a traffic stop and was sent back into ORR custody, the source said. 'We're seeing the warning signs right now,' Nally said. 'There's a concern that these welfare check ins could turn into the mass detention of sponsors and mass return of kids to ORR.' Experts say it's unusual for children to be swiftly sent back into ORR custody, but their concerns extend beyond that, arguing that additional guidelines for releases make it more difficult for those kids to leave custody again and fast-track deportation proceedings could put them at risk of removal. The average length of care for children in custody has jumped from 67 days in December 2024 to 170 days in April 2025 as guidelines to release kids have become more stringent. Under Trump, the agency has placed additional checks on sponsors that include income requirements, stringent ID requirements and DNA tests. Those steps, which are layered on top of already-existing background checks, are particularly chilling for sponsors who are undocumented, which is often the case, former HHS officials say. A recent lawsuit argued that 'collectively, these policy changes have resulted in children across the country being separated from their loving families, while the government denies their release, unnecessarily prolonging their detention.' The guidelines have halted reunifications that were already set to take place for children in government custody. Two brothers, ages 7 and 14, were detained at a transitional foster care program in California. They have not been able to be released 'to their mother because she's been is unable to provide documents required' as part of the new policy guidance, according to the lawsuit. 'The steps that they have taken are ones that are not about child safety but rather about making it more difficult or impossible for undocumented parents and relatives to be able to be united or reunited with a child,' Greenberg told CNN. Within days of Trump taking office, a conference room in the Health and Human Services Department's Washington, DC, headquarters was transformed into a 'war room' for the purpose of tracking down migrant children, according to multiple sources. That room has become the centralized place where multiple federal agencies have gathered to pore over sensitive data about children who crossed the US southern border alone and share that information with the Department of Homeland Security. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited the war room last month to get briefed on the work there, according to one of the sources. According to multiple sources, Immigration and Customs Enforcement now has access to the Office of Refugee Resettlement portal, which contains sensitive information about children, including the basis for their immigration relief, like asylum, details about their sponsor placement and protected medical information. ORR has been responsible for unaccompanied migrant children for more than two decades, since former President George W. Bush signed legislation moving the care of kids out of an immigration enforcement agency. The agency's mandate is to place children 'in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child,' usually with a family member. In the early days of the Trump administration, the White House moved a senior ICE official, Melissa Harper, to oversee ORR, sending a message that, like his first term, immigration enforcement would be folded into an agency primarily focused on child welfare, according to three sources familiar with the matter. 'The message was clear that this was going to be a very enforcement-oriented regime and almost immediately people were being questioned and prodded on what was being done to protect children from traffickers, what was done to ensure children weren't released to dangerous sponsors,' said Mary Giovagnoli, who led ORR's ombudsman's office before she was terminated last month. Harper's short tenure — the outcome of internal disagreements, sources familiar said—later paved the way for Angie Salazar to take the helm. According to sources, Salazar, who also came from ICE, talks to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller frequently and has directed agency officials to quickly approve policy changes. Trump officials haven't provided evidence for their contention that hundreds of thousands of children are unaccounted for but appear to be basing that on a Homeland Security inspector general report stating that nearly 300,000 unaccompanied migrant children were not given notices to appear in court. That, however, doesn't mean they're missing, according to former officials. The DHS IG last August found that ICE didn't serve notices to appear, a document that instructs people to appear before an immigration judge, to more than 291,000 children. But it didn't explain whether that was, for example, a capacity issue or because addresses were missing. In a House panel hearing in May, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told lawmakers, 'President Trump has made it a priority of every Cabinet secretary and agency to make sure those children are located, that they're returned to safety. … The refugee program and sponsors were greatly abused in the previous administrations. The department of HHS is bringing some integrity back to the program.' Jen Smyers, a former ORR deputy director who served under Biden, told CNN that rushing is never appropriate, but that there are multiple checks sponsors have to go through to ensure quality control. 'There was rigorous vetting of all sponsors,' Smyers said, adding that sponsors went through Justice Department public records checks and sex offender registry checks. 'There's a difference between the vetting and what happens afterward. No amount of vetting is a predictor of the future.'
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Whistleblower accuses Biden admin of leaving thousands of migrant child trafficking reports uninvestigated
Under the Biden administration, the U.S. unwittingly became a government sponsor of child trafficking, according to Health and Human Services whistleblower, Tara Rodas. She claimed thousands of reports of migrant child human trafficking were left uninvestigated until President Donald Trump returned to the White House. On "Fox & Friends Weekend" Sunday, Rodas thanked host Rachel Campos-Duffy for bringing light to "what we now know was the Biden-Harris administration government-sponsored, taxpayer-funded child trafficking." Data from the Health and Human Services shows the Biden administration failed to investigate more than 7,000 reports of migrant child human trafficking, bringing the total backlog of reports to more than 65,000. New Report Reveals Illegal Immigrant Population Hit New High During Biden-era Crisis Rodas went on to explain that the prior administration's push to quickly process migrant children who entered the U.S. led to many being placed with sponsors who were not family and some who were active threats. "The New York Times, if you can imagine, even revealed that, in some zip codes, less than 10% of the kids went to family members. This is unacceptable," she said. "When I raised my hand to help the Biden administration with this crisis, I believed I was going to help place children in loving homes." Read On The Fox News App "I had no idea that we were sending children to criminals, to traffickers, and to members of transnational criminal organizations. … The Biden-Harris administration turned vulnerable children over to high-level criminal actors." Click Here For More Coverage Of Media And Culture Rodas attempted to take action on the issue in 2023, warning Congress that the U.S. had become the "middleman" in a transnational human trafficking operation. She detailed a process that begins with children being recruited in their home country, then smuggled to the U.S. border, and ends with the U.S. government placing the children with sponsors who are criminals and traffickers. But Trump, Rodas said, "will not stand for that." "The new administration under President Trump has taken unprecedented action to find these children," she said. "The Trump administration, miraculously, in just a four-month period, has gone through about 28% of that backlog." Rodas admitted there is more work to be done in locating and helping children that have been placed with criminals, but she expressed confidence that the Trump team will be successful. 'He Is Delivering': Trump's First Month Flips Script On Radical Biden-harris Border Policies "They are out there using every mechanism that they have," she said. "They are going to find these children."Original article source: Whistleblower accuses Biden admin of leaving thousands of migrant child trafficking reports uninvestigated
Fox News
3 days ago
- Health
- Fox News
Whistleblower accuses Biden admin of leaving thousands of migrant child trafficking reports uninvestigated
Under the Biden administration, the U.S. unwittingly became a government sponsor of child trafficking, according to Health and Human Services whistleblower, Tara Rodas. She claimed thousands of reports of migrant child human trafficking were left uninvestigated until President Donald Trump returned to the White House. On "Fox & Friends Weekend" Sunday, Rodas thanked host Rachel Campos-Duffy for bringing light to "what we now know was the Biden-Harris administration government-sponsored, taxpayer-funded child trafficking." Data from the Health and Human Services shows the Biden administration failed to investigate more than 7,000 reports of migrant child human trafficking, bringing the total backlog of reports to more than 65,000. Rodas went on to explain that the prior administration's push to quickly process migrant children who entered the U.S. led to many being placed with sponsors who were not family and some who were active threats. "The New York Times, if you can imagine, even revealed that, in some zip codes, less than 10% of the kids went to family members. This is unacceptable," she said. "When I raised my hand to help the Biden administration with this crisis, I believed I was going to help place children in loving homes." "I had no idea that we were sending children to criminals, to traffickers, and to members of transnational criminal organizations. … The Biden-Harris administration turned vulnerable children over to high-level criminal actors." Rodas attempted to take action on the issue in 2023, warning Congress that the U.S. had become the "middleman" in a transnational human trafficking operation. She detailed a process that begins with children being recruited in their home country, then smuggled to the U.S. border, and ends with the U.S. government placing the children with sponsors who are criminals and traffickers. But Trump, Rodas said, "will not stand for that." "The new administration under President Trump has taken unprecedented action to find these children," she said. "The Trump administration, miraculously, in just a four-month period, has gone through about 28% of that backlog." Rodas admitted there is more work to be done in locating and helping children that have been placed with criminals, but she expressed confidence that the Trump team will be successful. "They are out there using every mechanism that they have," she said. "They are going to find these children."
WIRED
6 days ago
- Health
- WIRED
The US Is Storing Migrant Children's DNA in a Criminal Database
May 29, 2025 6:30 AM Customs and Border Protection has swabbed the DNA of migrant children as young as 4, whose genetic data is uploaded to an FBI-run database that can track them if they commit crimes in the future. PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION: WIRED STAFF; GETTY IMAGES The United States government has collected DNA samples from upwards of 133,000 migrant children and teenagers—including at least one 4-year-old—and uploaded their genetic data into a national criminal database used by local, state, and federal law enforcement, according to documents reviewed by WIRED. The records, quietly released by the US Customs and Border Protection earlier this year, offer the most detailed look to date at the scale of CBP's controversial DNA collection program. They reveal for the first time just how deeply the government's biometric surveillance reaches into the lives of migrant children, some of whom may still be learning to read or tie their shoes—yet whose DNA is now stored in a system originally built for convicted sex offenders and violent criminals. The Department of Justice has argued that extensive DNA collection activity at the border provides 'an assessment of the danger' a migrant potentially 'poses to the public' and will essentially help solve crimes that may be committed in the future. Experts say that the children's raw genetic material will be stored indefinitely and worry that, without proper guardrails, the DNA dragnet could eventually be used for more extensive profiling. Spanning from October 2020 through the end of 2024, the records show that CBP swabbed the cheeks of between 829,000 and 2.8 million people, with experts estimating that the true figure, excluding duplicates, is likely well over 1.5 million. That number includes as many as 133,539 children and teenagers. These figures mark a sweeping expansion of biometric surveillance—one that explicitly targets migrant populations, including children. The DNA samples are registered in the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, a database administered by the FBI, which processes the DNA and stores the resulting genetic profiles. A network of criminal forensic databases, CODIS is used by local, state, and federal enforcement agencies to match DNA collected from crime scenes or convictions to identify suspects. On May 10, 2024, for instance, records say that CBP agents from the El Paso, Texas, field office collected a DNA sample from the mouth of an individual in its custody whom CBP identified as Cuban and who was detained for allegedly being an 'immigrant w/o docs.' Swabbing the individuals' cheek, the agents obtained a DNA sample containing the individual's entire genetic code and then sent the sample to the FBI for processing. According to CBP records, the individual was just 4 years old. Of the tens of thousands of minors whose DNA was collected by Customs and Border Protection over the past four years, as many as 227 were 13 or younger, including the 4-year-old. Department of Homeland Security policy states that individuals under 14 are generally exempt from DNA collection, but field officers have the discretion to collect DNA in some circumstances. The data shows additional entries for kids aged 10, 11, 12, and 13. The numbers spike beginning at age 14; more than 30,000 entries were logged for each age group from 14 to 17. Under current rules, DNA is generally collected from anyone who is also fingerprinted. According to DHS policy, 14 is the minimum age at which fingerprinting becomes routine. As many as 122 minors were categorized as American citizens, 53 of whom were not detained for any criminal arrest, CBP records say. (People asking to enter the United States to apply for asylum are put in civil rather than criminal custody.) Neither DHS nor CBP provided comment ahead of publication. Multiple legal, privacy, and immigration experts described the findings as deeply troubling. 'It's horribly dystopian,' says Vera Eidelman, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. 'It's impossible for me to think of a reason to collect a 4-year-old's DNA and upload it to a database that's explicitly supposed to be about criminal activity.' As one of the world's largest law enforcement agencies, CBP is responsible for intercepting and processing individuals who cross the US border without authorization. While Immigration and Customs Enforcement handles long-term detention and deportation, CBP controls the earliest, most vulnerable hours of a migrant's legal journey in the US, often when they are first taken into custody, questioned, and in many cases fingerprinted and swabbed for DNA. Both CBP and ICE operate under the Department of Homeland Security and, under current policy, are authorized to collect fingerprints and DNA from anyone in their custody as young as 14 years old. Exceptions for younger children can be made in certain cases involving 'potentially criminal situations'; however, the CBP data analyzed by WIRED indicates this was the case in as few as 2.2 percent of the hundreds of kids subjected to DNA swabs. Of the 227 people listed in the data as children under 14 and having their DNA submitted to the FBI, most of them are simply labeled 'detainee.' Only five were listed as arrestees or linked to criminal charges. CBP's participation in the CODIS program isn't new, though it expanded significantly after a 2020 Department of Justice rule amending a previous exemption that effectively allowed DHS to avoid collecting DNA from civil immigration detainees. Sara Huston, an expert in genomics policy and the principal investigator at the Genetics and Justice Laboratory and a research assistant professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, tells WIRED that CODIS is a powerful tool for law enforcement when solving violent crimes, sexual assaults, and missing persons cases. Huston explains that typically when DNA is collected from a crime scene—such as in a sexual assault case—it's processed and uploaded to CODIS and compared with DNA from anyone in the database, which includes people who have been previously arrested for certain crimes or convicted. A match can help investigators connect unsolved cases, identify suspects, and share critical leads across jurisdictions. But the inclusion of migrants, the vast majority of whom were not listed in CBP data as having been accused of any felonies, raises deeper questions about what kind of data belongs in a criminal database. CODIS was designed to track criminal offenders, not to permanently catalog the genetic information of undocumented children passing through immigration custody. 'It's not that we can't solve crimes by collecting these samples—that's why CODIS exists, and it's a wonderful tool,' Huston says. 'But it's not a fair system to keep DNA of people who have not committed crimes on the assumption that they likely will.' Apprehensions of migrants who crossed the border unlawfully between ports of entry have since fallen to historic lows during the current Trump administration; it's unclear whether the pace of DNA collection has also slowed, as the most recent data ends on December 31, 2024. The data, which CBP published to its website in February, shows that DNA collection accelerated under the Biden administration, with daily submissions to CODIS increasing sharply in 2024 alongside a reported rise in border apprehensions. On a single day in January 2024, for example, the Laredo, Texas, field office submitted as many as 3,930 DNA samples to the FBI—252 were listed as 17 or younger, CBP records show. The DOJ has defended the mass collection of DNA at the border as necessary for solving crimes. In its official rationale, the agency argues that this sweeping effort is 'essential' not only for identifying migrants who may have committed crimes in the past but also for potentially solving crimes they might commit in the future. For Stevie Glaberson, the director of research and advocacy at the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, the implication is clear: The US government is treating every person who crosses the border, regardless of age, legal status, or whether they're accused of any wrongdoing, as a possible suspect in crimes yet to occur. If the government's goal is to determine whether a detainee is connected to past crimes, Glaberson tells WIRED, there would be no need to add that person's DNA to CODIS—they could simply check for a match against existing profiles. 'It's hard to imagine a situation where a 4-year-old was involved in criminal activity,' Glaberson says. 'Taking DNA from a 4-year old and adding it into CODIS flies in the face of any immigration purpose,' she says, adding, 'That's not immigration enforcement. That's genetic surveillance.' Multiple studies show no link between immigration and increased crime. In 2024, Glaberson coauthored a report called 'Raiding the Genome' that was the first to try to quantify DHS's 2020 expansion of DNA collection. It found that if DHS continues to collect DNA at the rate the agency itself projects, one-third of the DNA profiles in CODIS by 2034 will have been taken by DHS, and seemingly without any real due process—the protections that are supposed to be in place before law enforcement compels a person to hand over their most sensitive information. CBP collects DNA using buccal swab kits—long cotton-tipped sticks used to scrape the inside of a detainee's cheek. While the DNA sample itself contains a person's entire genetic code, Huston says that what's uploaded to CODIS is better understood as a lower-resolution snapshot—a DNA profile made up of select genetic markers used solely to identify individuals—and is not intended to reveal traits, health conditions, or genetic predispositions. However, both she and Glaberson note that the raw DNA sample itself could be stored indefinitely. The DOJ did not respond to multiple requests for comment, nor did it answer questions about how long raw DNA samples are stored. However, a current DOJ official, speaking to WIRED on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retribution, defended the collection and retention of migrant DNA. Storing raw samples, they say, is necessary for due process—to confirm that a match in CODIS can be traced back to the original raw material. 'If you aren't committing a crime, being in this database isn't going to affect you,' they say, arguing that a larger pool of DNA increases the chances of finding a match. Under federal law, CODIS data and the raw genetic samples can only be used for identification in criminal cases. DHS policy states that DNA samples may not be used to discriminate 'in the provision of health benefits or other services' and that DNA samples are not used by the FBI to 'reveal any physical traits, race, ethnicity, disease susceptibility, or other sensitive information about an individual.' But privacy advocates worry that those rules aren't enough, since policies can change and new uses can emerge alongside new technology. For instance, privacy and civil liberties experts have warned that the government could one day use DNA to link immigrants to family members, who could also be targeted by law enforcement. Another concern is that genetic data might be reanalyzed to predict health-related markers or inherited conditions—potentially influencing decisions about admissibility or whether someone is likely to require government support. As Glaberson warns, 'The warehousing of genetic samples containing the entirety of people's genetic code presents a risk in the future.'
