ICE Collected Nearly 1M People’s DNA Last Year–Including Young Children

美国移民及海关执法局（ICE）去年采集了近百万人DNA，其中包括幼童

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 (ICE) officers were waiting to arrest him. 2025年3月13日，雨果·莫雷诺-门德斯（Hugo Moreno-Mendez）抵达德克萨斯州韦科市的麦克伦南县缓刑办公室，本以为只是例行的缓刑报到。然而，等待他的却是美国移民及海关执法局（ICE）的特工，他们当场将其逮捕。

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. Open your mouth. 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. 根据《连线》（WIRED）查阅的一份刑事起诉书显示，特工将莫雷诺-门德斯带到了附近的一个ICE外勤办公室。在那里，多名驱逐出境官员轮番上前，提出了同样的要求：“张开嘴。”一名官员试图采集他的指纹并用棉签擦拭其口腔内侧以获取DNA。他拒绝了。接着第二名官员尝试，然后是第三名。每一次，莫雷诺-门德斯都予以拒绝。

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. 四天后，莫雷诺-门德斯被控未按规定登记为非公民，以及在联邦拘留期间拒绝提供DNA——后者是一项轻罪，而截至2021年，ICE曾表示其从未听说过有此类案件被受理起诉。

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. 莫雷诺-门德斯对这两项指控均要求进行审判。2025年8月18日，韦科市的一名地方法官裁定他两项罪名成立，并判处其刑期为已服刑时间（即当庭释放）。

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. 莫雷诺-门德斯的案件只是针对因民事移民违规而被拘留者进行大规模DNA采集行动的一部分。这项联邦行动以起诉威胁为后盾，将几乎所有ICE拘留人员的基因档案汇入为刑事调查而建立的FBI数据库中。乔治城大学法律中心隐私与技术中心的一项新研究估计，国土安全部已成为美国刑事DNA系统中新基因档案的最大单一来源，仅ICE一家在2025年就可能增加了约92万份档案。

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. Yet once the DNA profiles of detained people enter the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), law enforcement agencies across the country can compare them against evidence from unsolved crimes—and against crime-scene DNA collected years or even decades from now. The physical sample, which holds a person’s entire genome, sits in a federal laboratory indefinitely. 绝大多数被ICE拘留的人员并无刑事定罪记录，且在美国无证居住通常属于民事而非刑事违规。然而，一旦被拘留者的DNA档案进入FBI的“综合DNA索引系统”（CODIS），全国各地的执法机构就可以将其与未决案件的证据进行比对，甚至与未来数年乃至数十年后采集的犯罪现场DNA进行比对。这些包含个人完整基因组的物理样本将被无限期地保存在联邦实验室中。

The expansion of DNA collection has extended to families held in immigration detention, sparked lawsuits over the collection of DNA from protesters and others who allege they should never have been subjected to the program, and drawn congressional scrutiny after lawmakers learned that children were being swabbed at a family detention center in Dilley, Texas. DNA采集的范围已扩大到被移民拘留的家庭，引发了针对抗议者及其他声称不应被纳入该计划的人员的诉讼。在立法者得知德克萨斯州迪利市（Dilley）的一个家庭拘留中心正在对儿童进行口腔拭子采样后，该计划也引起了国会的审查。

“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.” “迪利拘留中心的家庭中没有一人被判有罪，”美国众议员华金·卡斯特罗（Joaquin Castro）、格雷格·斯坦顿（Greg Stanton）和娜内特·巴拉甘（Nanette Barragán）在给《连线》的联合声明中表示，“他们不属于旨在针对暴力罪犯的数据库，尤其是儿童。”

In response to questions from WIRED, a DHS spokesperson defended DNA collection as a border-security and identification measure, saying CBP takes samples from people arrested on federal charges and from detained noncitizens who are subject to fingerprinting and not otherwise exempt. Asked about children whose profiles were submitted to CODIS, DHS pointed to a separate DNA-testing program used to verify family relationships. That program is distinct from the collection at the center of WIRED’s reporting. DHS did not address Georgetown’s estimate that ICE may have added hundreds of thousands of profiles to CODIS in 2025. 在回应《连线》的提问时，国土安全部发言人为DNA采集辩护，称其为边境安全和身份识别措施，并表示海关及边境保护局（CBP）会对因联邦指控被捕的人员以及需要采集指纹且无豁免权的被拘留非公民进行采样。当被问及提交至CODIS的儿童档案时，国土安全部提到了一个用于核实家庭关系的独立DNA测试项目。该项目与《连线》报道中所述的采集行为不同。国土安全部并未回应乔治城大学关于ICE在2025年可能向CODIS增加了数十万份档案的估算。

For most of the program’s history, migrant DNA collection played out at the border, where Customs and Border Protection (CBP) swabbed people it took into custody. ICE’s own contribution was marginal. Internal training slides obtained by Georgetown through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show ICE collected 3,609 DNA samples in fiscal year 2020 and 16,392 more through mid-May of fiscal 2021—roughly 20,000 in all. CBP was operating on a different scale entirely: 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. 在该计划实施的大部分时间里，移民DNA采集主要发生在边境，由海关及边境保护局（CBP）对被拘留者进行采样。ICE的贡献微乎其微。乔治城大学通过《信息自由法》（FOIA）获得的内部培训幻灯片显示，ICE在2020财年采集了3,609份DNA样本，2021财年截至5月中旬又采集了16,392份，总计约2万份。CBP的规模则完全不同：乔治城大学获得并分析的机构电子表格显示，从2020年10月到2024年底，CBP向FBI发送了至少136万人的DNA，是同期ICE采集量的十几倍。

Georgetown’s new report suggests the program entered an entirely different phase in 2025. FBI records show the “detainee” index of CODIS—the sub-index where DHS-collected profiles are stored—reached 3,345,692 profiles by December 2025, growing by roughly 995,000 that year alone. That is more than 2,700 people a day, every day, for a year. 乔治城大学的新报告表明，该计划在2025年进入了一个完全不同的阶段。FBI记录显示，CODIS的“被拘留者”索引（即存储国土安全部采集档案的子索引）到2025年12月已达到3,345,692份，仅当年就增长了约99.5万份。这意味着在这一年里，平均每天有超过2,700人被录入。

The FBI does not explicitly disclose which agency submitted which DNA profile. To estimate the split, Georgetown compared the total against CBP records showing the agency sent the DNA of approximately 75,215 people to the FBI in 2025. ICE has refused to release comparable data, rebuffing repeated public records requests. Based on the gap, Georgetown estimates that ICE may be responsible for as many as 919,908 new profiles in a single year. FBI并未明确披露每份DNA档案是由哪个机构提交的。为了估算各机构的占比，乔治城大学将总数与CBP的记录进行了对比，后者显示该机构在2025年向FBI发送了约75,215人的DNA。ICE拒绝发布可比数据，并多次回绝了公共记录请求。基于这一差距，乔治城大学估计，ICE在一年内可能贡献了多达919,908份新档案。

The change tracks a broader shift. According to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse data cited by Georgetown, CBP once accounted for the majority of immigration detentions. ICE now accounts for roughly 85 percent, CBP for 15. As of July 11 of this year, ICE was holding 65,765 people, up from 60,311 in early April, while arrests climbed toward 1,500 a day, according to Austin Kocher, a research assistant professor at Syracuse University. The largest single group in detention had no criminal history at all. 这一变化反映了更广泛的趋势。根据乔治城大学引用的交易记录访问信息中心（TRAC）数据，CBP曾占移民拘留的大多数。而现在，ICE占了约85%，CBP占15%。据雪城大学研究助理教授奥斯汀·科赫（Austin Kocher）称，截至今年7月11日，ICE拘留了65,765人，高于4月初的60,311人，且逮捕人数正攀升至每天近1,500人。在被拘留者中，人数最多的群体完全没有犯罪记录。

“Fun Facts” “趣味事实”

US law enforcement’s increased DNA collection traces to a legal and regulatory shift that began more than two decades ago. Congress in 2005 authorized federal agencies to collect DNA from people arrested, charged, convicted, or detained under federal authority. For years, however, Justice Department regulations allowed DHS to exempt many people held in immigration custody when collecting samples would create resource burdens. 美国执法部门DNA采集的增加，可以追溯到二十多年前开始的一项法律和监管转变。2005年，国会授权联邦机构从在联邦权力下被捕、被控、被定罪或被拘留的人员身上采集DNA。然而多年来，司法部的法规允许国土安全部在采集样本会造成资源负担时，豁免许多被移民拘留的人员。

In 2020, the DOJ eliminated the exemption. That December, ICE issued Directive 10092.1, requiring officers to collect DNA from nearly everyone in its custody. 2020年，司法部取消了这一豁免。同年12月，ICE发布了第10092.1号指令，要求官员对几乎所有被拘留人员进行DNA采集。