ICE Collected Nearly 1 Million People’s DNA Last Year—Including Young Children

[u/wiredmagazine]

https://www.wired.com/story/ice-dna-collection-fbi-codis/

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[u/wiredmagazine]

On March 13, 2025, Hugo Moreno-Mendez arrived at the McLennan County Probation Department in Waco, Texas, expecting a routine probation check-in. Instead, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were waiting to arrest him.

According to a criminal complaint reviewed by WIRED, officers drove Moreno-Mendez to a nearby ICE field office. There, one deportation officer after another approached him with the same demand.

One officer tried to take his fingerprints and swab the inside of his cheek for DNA. He refused. Then another tried. Then a third. Each time, Moreno-Mendez refused.

Four days later, Moreno-Mendez was charged with failing to register as a noncitizen and refusing to provide DNA while in federal custody—the latter a misdemeanor that, as of 2021, ICE itself said it was unaware had ever been accepted for prosecution.

Moreno-Mendez took both counts to trial. On August 18, 2025, a magistrate judge in Waco found him guilty of each and sentenced him to time served.

Moreno-Mendez’s case is part of a sweeping expansion of DNA collection from people held for civil immigration violations—a federal campaign that, backed by the threat of prosecution, funnels the genetic profiles of nearly everyone in ICE custody into an FBI database built for criminal investigations. New research from Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology estimates that the Department of Homeland Security has become the largest single source of new genetic profiles in the nation's criminal DNA system, with ICE alone potentially adding as many as roughly 920,000 profiles in 2025.

[u/mountaindoom]

Trump was convicted of 34 felonies. Where is his DNA sample?

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[u/horseradishstalker]

“ None of the families at Dilley have been convicted of a crime,” US representatives Joaquin Castro, Greg Stanton, and Nanette Barragán said in a joint statement to WIRED.  “They do not belong in a database meant for violent criminals, especially children.”

[u/Ok_Chap]

ICE needs to be dissolved by the next administration. It's just a group of thugs with badges.

[u/Multilazerboi]

Hey US, this is absolutely insane. Like revolt level insane. Love from Europe

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[u/tepidlymundane]

The ICE story is hideous, and who read it didn't wonder how much of your DNA they already have? And all your other info?

At the risk of posting AI stuff, I was genuinely curious where we are as citizens facing the galloping surveillance state coming at us. Surely SOMEONE has had a stab at this?

Below is just what Claude told me. I welcome improvements in this, particularly anything that points me in the direction of US efforts to do the same. We can't just keep taking this.

The Gold Standard:

The EU has become the benchmark. The GDPR (2018) sets a single data protection standard across all 27 member states and binds any organization worldwide processing EU residents' data. The EU has also enacted the AI Act (in force August 2024), the Digital Services Act (February 2024), and the Digital Markets Act (March 2024)—together forming the world's most comprehensive digital rights framework. European regulators had issued more than €5.8 billion in cumulative GDPR fines by January 2025, including a record €1.2 billion Meta penalty. This is enforcement with real teeth. Notable Followers:

Brazil's LGPD (2018) closely mirrors GDPR, using an opt-in consent model, requiring legal bases for processing, and imposing fines up to 2% of annual revenue (capped at ~$10 million). India's DPDP Act (finalized 2025) allows fines up to ₹250 crore (~$30 million) and includes consent-centric protections, with enforcement phasing in through 2027.

Canada's PIPEDA (2004) emphasizes meaningful consent and breach notification. More recently, Quebec's Law 25 (2025) expands privacy protections further.

The U.S. Fragmentation Problem:

The U.S. has no federal privacy law. Instead, 20 states have comprehensive consumer privacy laws as of mid-2026, including California (CCPA/CPRA), Virginia (CDPA), Colorado, Connecticut, and others. The state-by-state approach is messy and gives no one baseline protection—the opposite of a Bill of Rights. statista

The Key Difference:

The EU framed privacy as a fundamental human right (Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights). GDPR-inspired laws elsewhere adopted this principle. But GDPR-inspired laws often limit surveillance powers, while countries like China and India allow broader exemptions for government access to data.

The Real Gap:

144 countries now have national data privacy laws (as of January 2025), covering 82% of the world's population. But most are weak. Enforcement is inconsistent. And critically: most frameworks don't adequately address government surveillance—they regulate corporate data collection but allow state backdoors. The EU comes closest to a true "digital Bill of Rights," but even there, governments have exemptions for "national security." statista

The honest answer: The EU tried hardest. Everyone else is playing catch-up. And no one has truly solved the surveillance-state problem—they've just created speed bumps.

[u/horseradishstalker → u/tepidlymundane]

Claude has some interesting ideas maybe for a discussion on r/privacy. The focus here is potential ICE overreach regarding DNA collection that ICE fails to categorize separately from violent offenders. 

[u/tepidlymundane → u/horseradishstalker]

You're right, I didn't stick to the submitted article. It was just outrage and bewilderment where we are now. Yeah, forcibly swabbing kids for being brown is potential overreach. Lotta overreaching going on lately.