Is ICE building a DNA database of political protesters? : NPR
Federal immigration agents arrest a person who was observing them on January 13, 2026 in Minneapolis. After being arrested, some protesters said federal agents took samples of their DNA.
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In late January, Ben and his wife Gabby were driving to their home in northeast Minneapolis when they received a message during an activist group chat that federal immigration agents were nearby. They had been observing ICE activity in the city for weeks and went there.
A crowd had already gathered when they arrived. Ben, who asked NPR to use only their first names because he feared retaliation from the federal government, stood on the side of the road filming the officers, who were back in their car and appeared about to leave.
“But they stopped and got out of the car,” he said. “And that’s when I got dumped.”
Video of the incident, reviewed by NPR, shows a masked federal officer running toward Ben and knocking him to the ground. Three immigration officers detained him and dragged him to their vehicle. Ben says he was detained for about three hours. Before his release, police photographed him and took his fingerprints. Then, before Ben fully realized what was happening, an officer ran a cotton swab, similar to a Q-tip, along the inside of his cheek.
“It was super casual,” Ben says. “It was just like, ‘Okay, yeah, so we’ll take this now.'”
NPR found five other people in Illinois, Oregon and Minnesota who described similar events in recent months. In sworn statements in lawsuits over the Trump administration’s handling of immigration, they said they were arrested, apparently unprovoked, while protesting ICE and then asked agents to take or attempt to take what appeared to be a sample of their DNA.
“Are six cases enough to constitute a pattern? I think so, because history tells us that what law enforcement is allowed to do, they tend to do more of,” says Erin Murphy, a law professor at New York University.
The federal government has broad authority to collect DNA from people he has arrested or who are facing charges. In fact, in a statement to NPR, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said: federal law actually requires enforcement of federal law to collect DNA samples from people arrested or charged.
But legal experts say that authority may be too broad.
“What law enforcement would say is ‘these are people who were facing charges,'” Murphy says. “What charges do they face if it’s civil immigration authorities doing what appears to be an illegal interference with First Amendment rights? Even if that’s the stated basis, is it constitutional? I think the answer should clearly be no.”
In 2013, the The Supreme Court ruled that a Maryland state law that required an arrested person to give their DNA to police was constitutional. But that case involved clear restrictions: It involved a law that required the arrest to be for a serious crime, and that the arrest had to be lawful, based on probable cause.
Orin Kerr, a law professor at Stanford University, says the more pressing question is whether or not the arrest is legal when it comes to DNA taken from ICE protesters.
“What concerns you is an officer making a determination on the ground that a person committed a crime when they might not have committed a crime. Maybe they were doing something protected by the First Amendment,” Kerr says. “The officer says, ‘I think you’re out of line, I’m going to arrest you.’ It turns out the officer was wrong, but the DNA test was performed and the information was entered into the database. So what? »
Kerr says it’s not immediately clear what the legal recourse might be for such a violation, although there is possibilities to ask the federal government deletes a DNA record.
NPR has found dozens of examples people who said federal agents told them they were committing a crime while peacefully observing immigration activity, which civil rights attorneys say is constitutionally protected behavior.
Andrew Birrell, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, says he fears that collecting protesters’ DNA could have a chilling effect on free speech.
“The Court was not imagining a First Amendment situation,” Birrell says. “This concerns me greatly, because it appears that the government is creating a catalog of political dissidents.”
It is unclear where samples acquired from protesters in recent months end up or how they are used. DHS did not respond to NPR’s questions about the matter. Administrative officials have already denied the existence of a database of demonstrators.
In the past, DNA samples taken by federal immigration officials have been added to a national database maintained by the FBI, which can be accessed by many state and local law enforcement agencies. From 2020 to 2024, for example, DHS collected the DNA of more than 2,000 U.S. citizens, according to one study. Georgetown University report. These samples have been added to this database.
NYU’s Murphy says having protesters’ DNA samples in a centralized police database is particularly troubling because the genetic information is so sensitive. It’s much more than a fingerprint.
“You’re not just giving up abstract things. You’re giving up valuable information,” she says.
DNA testing can reveal information about a person’s ancestry, their risk of develop certain health problemsand their probability of have certain personality traits. The fear, Murphy says, is that all this data could be weaponized — and that extends beyond the risk to a single person.
“You take their whole family tree going back in history,” Murphy says. “And you’re not just taking their DNA at that moment, you’re taking the DNA of their children and the DNA of their children’s children.”
In Minneapolis, Ben, the man dumped by ICE, was still in severe pain a few days after his arrest. He went to the hospital, where doctors found three broken ribs. His medical records, reviewed by NPR, indicate he suffered “blunt chest trauma.” More than a month later, he still feels some pain, but says what lasts the longest is the psychological stress caused by the whole ordeal.
“I don’t really have the words to say it,” he said. “It’s just not something that should have happened.”
