The Biden Administration has quietly ended a policy in which migrants entering via the U.S. southern border were subjected to DNA testing, according to a leaked memo. The policy was implemented during the Trump administration to deter child trafficking.
The leaked memo, obtained by Just the News, states: “The U.S. Customs and Border Protection familial DNA contract with BODE Technologies will end on May 31, 2023, and all familial DNA testing will conclude on that date.”
In 2019, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began administering DNA tests at the border to determine whether or not familial claims made by immigrants were accurate. When Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents suspected that adults claiming to be the parents of young children were fraudulent, agents would refer the family to ICE for testing to confirm that the children were not in fact being trafficked.
During a one-month period in 2019, ICE officials identified 101 possible instances of fake familial claims, one-third of which were determined to be fraudulent, according to the Associated Press.
Within the first half of fiscal year 2019 ICE officials “say they have uncovered more than 1,000 cases and referred 45 cases for prosecution” according to the AP. “The fraud could also include the use of false birth certificates or documents, and adults accused of fraud aren’t necessarily prosecuted for it; some are prosecuted for illegal entry or other crimes.”
Before the Trump policy was put in place, the Department of Homeland Security warned border officials about a trafficking scheme dubbed “child recycling.”
The scheme incentivizes human smugglers to “rent” children, including infants, out to border crossers to give them a better chance at disappearing into the interior of the United States.
"Once they had served their purpose, the children would then be smuggled back into Central America, where they would be rented out for service once again," Morgan Zegers noted in a May 28 report for Human Events.
As part of his administration's comprehensive crack down on human trafficking, President Donald Trump ordered ICE to implement DNA testing, which would soon apprehend large sums of adults trafficking children across the border. During the pilot period of the program, it was discovered that 15 percent of families apprehended at the border had made fraudulent claims.
Critics of Team Biden's decision to end the Trump policy argue that the move to end familial DNA testing will create a surge in child trafficking along the southern border at a time with record-high illegal immigration.
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