Georgia bill would allow DNA swabs from immigrants detained on minor charges

Georgia lawmakers are weighing a proposal that would broaden when DNA swabs are collected from immigrants in state custody, using a federal immigration detainer as the trigger. Under the bill described in an Associated Press report, DNA collection would apply to people facing misdemeanor or felony charges when ICE issues a detainer and does not pick up the person within 48 hours.

Sponsoring the measure, Republican state Sen. Tim Bearden said the state should use rapidly changing technology—specifically DNA—to solve crimes and help victims. “Technology is changing quickly, and DNA is one of those things that help us tremendously when we’re trying to make sure to bring justice to victims in this state and across this country,” Bearden said at a March hearing, according to the report.

The proposal would also extend beyond the typical state practice of swabbing only certain felony arrests. The AP analysis described that while states may collect DNA for many serious crimes, only a limited number collect DNA in some misdemeanor cases, such as sex offenses, and none collect it for all misdemeanor arrests.

According to the report, the bill’s likely reach is tied to Georgia’s classification of offenses. Some legal experts said that because traffic offenses can be treated as misdemeanors in Georgia—while they may be civil violations in other places—the proposal could translate into DNA collection stemming from minor violations, depending on how individuals are processed after arrest.

The bill would rely on a federal mechanism for immigration enforcement: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer requests. The report said people subject to such detainers are not necessarily undocumented or ultimately deportable, because their status can change during later proceedings; still, they could face DNA swabbing under the Georgia measure. Common Cause Georgia’s Kyle Gomez-Leineweber said the effect would be a system that collects DNA based on perceived immigration status, calling it “a two-tiered system.”

Privacy advocates also framed the proposal as part of a wider expansion of biometric information gathering. Georgetown University’s Center on Privacy and Technology research director Stevie Glaberson said the measure fits a broader pattern of “government actors at all levels vacuuming up DNA in all available contexts,” according to the report.

The legislation comes as the Trump administration seeks to expand the role of DNA and biometrics in immigration enforcement, the AP reported. The article said the FBI’s National DNA Index System—launched in 1998—contains more than 26 million DNA profiles, including many from people convicted of crimes, and that federal rules changed during Trump’s first term in ways that increased DNA profiles added to the national database.

DHS officials, in a statement cited by the AP, said the federal government’s approach depends on local and state partnerships for enforcement. The department said “partnerships with law enforcement are critical to having the resources we need to arrest criminal illegal aliens across the country.”

Legal experts raised constitutional concerns about the practice of collecting DNA from people who have been charged but not convicted. The report noted that the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 upheld DNA collection from people charged—not yet convicted—of certain serious crimes, but it added that immigrant advocates questioned whether civil immigration detainers meet the probable cause threshold required under Fourth Amendment protections. The American Immigration Council’s Jorge Loweree said there appears to be “no” meaningful justification for states to require DNA collection from noncitizens in custody who have merely been accused of a crime, even a low-level one, and that it “seems like this is just an effort to increase the surveillance of noncitizens.”

The bill would also align Georgia with other states that have targeted immigrants for DNA collection. The AP report said Florida passed a similar law in 2023, and Oklahoma authorized DNA collection from immigrants in the U.S. illegally in 2009, though that Oklahoma measure remains subject to funding.