21.7 million DNA profiles are in the hands of the FBI, which is equivalent to about 7% of the U.S. population. This is according to Bureau data reviewed by The Intercept.
The FBI also is gunning to nearly double its current $56.7 million budget for dealing with its DNA catalog with an additional $53.1 million, according to its budget request for the 2024 fiscal year.
“The requested resources will allow the FBI to process the rapidly increasing number of DNA samples collected by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,” the appeal says.
In an April 2023 statement sent to Congress to explain the budget request, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the FBI collected around 90,000 DNA samples a month, which is “over 10 times the historical sample volume.” He added that the agency expected that number to swell to about 120,000 a month, totaling about 1.5 million new DNA samples a year.
In 2021, the FBI touted the 20 millionth DNA profile as “a major milestone,” calling it “one of the most successful investigative tools available to U.S. law enforcement.”
The growth of the FBI’s sample load is mostly thanks to a Trump-era rule change that mandated the collection of DNA from migrants arrested or detained by immigration authorities. And those increases are sounding the alarm bells for civil liberty advocates.
“When we’re talking about rapid expansion like this, it’s getting us ever closer to a universal DNA database,” Vera Eidelman, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union who specializes in genetic privacy, told The Intercept. “I think the civil liberties implications here are significant.”
The rapid growth of the FBI’s sample load is in large part thanks to a Trump-era rule change that mandated the collection of DNA from migrants who were arrested or detained by immigration authorities.
Until recently, the American DNA database surpassed even that of China, which launched an ambitious DNA collection program in 2017. Since then, China announced a plan seeking to gather between 5% and 10% of its male population’s DNA, according to a 2020 study cited by the New York Times.
