DNA of Undocumented may be Collected

Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona is up to his old anti-immigrant tricks, pushing for the collection of DNA of undocumented who are detained, even though they have not been convicted of any violent offense.

Ellen Nakashima and Spencer Hsu write in the Washington Post:

The U.S. government will soon begin collecting DNA samples from all citizens arrested in connection with any federal crime and from many immigrants detained by federal authorities, adding genetic identifiers from more than 1 million individuals a year to the swiftly growing federal law enforcement DNA database.

The policy will substantially expand the current practice of routinely collecting DNA samples from only those convicted of federal crimes, and it will build on a growing policy among states to collect DNA from many people who are arrested.

The initiative, to be published as a proposed rule in the Federal Register in coming days, reflects a congressional directive that DNA from arrestees be collected to help catch a range of domestic criminals. But it also requires, for the first time, the collection of DNA samples from people other than U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents who are detained by U.S. authorities.

“Innocent people don’t belong in a so-called criminal database,” said Tania Simoncelli, science adviser for the American Civil Liberties Union. “We’re crossing a line.”

The database expansion was authorized by Congress as an amendment to the Violence Against Women Act and was billed primarily as a way to track down serial rapists, murderers and other offenders. “We know for a fact that the proposed regulations will save the lives of many innocent people and will prevent devastating crimes,” said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), a sponsor of the legislation. “These regulations are long overdue — we should have done this 10 years ago.”

U.S. officials said that when the measure is fully implemented, roughly 1.2 million people a year could be added to the national database. About 140,000 of those would be people arrested for federal crimes. Many of the rest would be foreigners detained for being in the United States illegally.

Immigration rights advocates note that most illegal immigrants are detained for administrative violations, not federal crimes. By adding their DNA to the database, “it casts them all as criminals,” said Paromita Shah, associate director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild.

It was unclear  whether Mexican border-crossers who are briefly detained and then released in Mexico will be covered. The Border Patrol made 877,000 apprehensions in 2007, most of them of Mexicans.

The proposed rule will be subject to a 30-day public comment period. Click here for the full story.

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