June 2, 2025: The Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology, together with Amica Center for Immigrants Rights and Americans for Immigrant Justice, has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This legal action is in reaction to DHS’s failure to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request regarding how DHS collects, stores, and uses DNA samples taken from non-citizens.
As the Privacy Center reported in its 2024 publication, Raiding the Genome, since 2020, DHS has radically expanded its constitutionally questionable DNA collection program, increasing the agency’s contributions to the FBI’s DNA database—which police across the country access for criminal investigations—by an astonishing 5,000 percent. The three organizations filed a joint FOIA request in the summer of 2024 to uncover critical information about how the data is managed and utilized—information that remains undisclosed to the public.
After waiting over nine months without a meaningful response, the three organizations filed a lawsuit in the District of Columbia to ensure accountability and transparency.
This lawsuit comes at a critical moment in national immigration policy, when the administration is routinely carrying out enforcement actions—including detention and deportation—against non-citizens without regard for their lawful presence in the United States. The mass collection of DNA, often conducted under coercive and legally ambiguous circumstances, is disproportionately aimed at people of color.
Read the lawsuit here.
Co-counsel and organizational plaintiffs provided the following statements:
Stevie Glaberson, Director of Research and Advocacy, Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, said:
“The Department of Homeland Security has built out a massive DNA-collection program, quickly becoming the primary contributor of DNA profiles to the nation’s criminal policing DNA database, CODIS. DHS is doing so despite collecting DNA from people accused of no crime and while operating with none of the constraints that are supposed to be in place before the government compels someone to give over their most sensitive personal information. Americans deserve visibility on the details of this program, and the department’s lack of transparency is unacceptable.”
Daniel Melo, Immigration Impact Lab Attorney, Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, said:
“As immigration enforcement agencies continue to deploy sophisticated tools to target, surveil, and arbitrarily detain non-citizens, the community most impacted by these policy choices has a right to know how, when, and why genetic material is being taken, stored, and used against non-citizens—potentially indefinitely—simply because they were not born in the United States.”
Emily Tucker, Executive Director, Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, said:
“It is a mistake to think of DHS’s DNA collection program as ‘immigration enforcement.’ Trump is using immigration powers to justify the activities of his militarized federal police force because there is so little institutional or judicial oversight or accountability for executive enforcement actions that invoke ‘immigration authority.’ This program is one part of a massive surveillance dragnet that sweeps in information about everyone. They will use it for deportation, but they will also use it to intimidate, silence, and target anyone they perceive as the enemy.”
CONTACT:
Center on Privacy & Technology: Katie Evans, katie.evans@georgetown.edu, (202) 662-9879
Amica Center for Immigrant Rights: Erin Barnaby, media@amicacenter.org, (202) 360-4248
For more about the organizations, visit their websites: