Demand Progress

Tell ICE to stop using DNA testing on immigrant families!

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    Tell ICE to stop using DNA testing on immigrant families!

    Petition to ICE:
    We demand that you immediately stop using rapid DNA testing on immigrant families at the border.

    This year, ICE got a tech upgrade that will chill you to your core: DNA testing families at the border.1

    This is just the latest in a very long line of ICE atrocities at the US-Mexico border, and its implications are terrifying.

    Tell ICE: Stop using rapid DNA testing on immigrant families at the border.

    ICE has paid $5.2 million for rapid DNA testing at seven locations around the border. But there’s a serious catch: the rapid DNA testing industry as a whole (yes, that’s a thing) is still so faulty that roughly only 77% of samples collected can actually be tested.

    That’s bad, but just like everything else connected with ICE, this gets worse when forced on immigrant communities at the border.

    ICE is using these rapid DNA tests to “prove” a parent-child relationship within families. But, as everyone knows, the definition of a family can be looser – and incredibly more personal – than a parent-child DNA test can provide.

    Many of the immigrants making the dangerous trek to the United States are fleeing genocides and humanitarian crises in Central America.

    This rapid DNA testing is one tool helping ICE narrowly define who can be considered family, only to then rip children away from their caregivers. ICE consistently operates with zero regard to moral and ethical concerns. But when equipped with unreliable “high-tech” gadgets, they will just get more efficient at being inhumane and racist.

    Tell ICE: Stop using rapid DNA testing on immigrant families.

     

    Sources:
    1. EFF, “ICE’s Rapid DNA Testing on Migrants at the Border Is Yet Another Iteration of Family Separation,” August 2, 2019.