Whistleblowers: Biden-Harris DHS Refusing to Collect DNA from Millions of Migrants in Violation of Federal Law

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is refusing to collect DNA from millions of migrants arriving at the United States-Mexico border, whistleblowers allege.

A letter to Biden and Harris, signed by more than two dozen House and Senate Republicans, details whistleblower allegations against DHS in particular for allegedly refusing to abide by the DNA Fingerprint Act {snip}

The law requires federal agencies to collect DNA samples from those arrested, charged, and convicted of crimes as well as foreign nationals detained by the federal government.

While former President Barack Obama’s DHS had failed to comply with the law, former President Donald Trump finalized a rule in 2020 that made clear the law had to be followed. Since then, whistleblowers allege, Biden and Harris’s DHS has continued to violate the law.

“In Fiscal Year 2021, the Biden-Harris Administration collected DNA from only 16% of the 1.9 million individuals encountered by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Office of Field Operations (OFO),” the Republicans write:

Further, in Fiscal Year 2022, DNA was collected from only 37% of the 2.7 million individuals encountered by CBP and OFO. Whistleblowers also disclosed that in the first three quarters of Fiscal Year 2023, CBP and OFO collected DNA from only 36% of the 2.3 million individuals encountered. {snip} CBP officials visited United States Border Patrol (USBP) processing facilities in Tucson, Casa Grande, Yuma, and San Diego, and at no facility that these officials visited was DNA being collected. This blatant disregard for the law has been exacerbated by your administration’s failed border policies, which have precipitated an unprecedented explosion in nationwide encounters of illegal immigrants at our borders — over 10 million in just three and-a-half years and this staggering sum doesn’t even account for the estimated 2 million that crossed and evaded apprehension. {snip}

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