Federal Agencies Use Finger Prints, DNA to Track Immigrant Communities

New white paper from Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Immigration Policy Center outlines privacy and security concerns.

By Jorge Rivas May 31, 2012

Last week the Immigration Policy Center (IPC) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released a report that outlines the current state of U.S. government collection of biometric information and the problems that could arise from these growing databases of records. According to the report there is a growing push to link biometric collection with immigration enforcement and immigrant communities are already affected by the way this data is collected, stored, and shared. According to the report "From Fingerprints to DNA: Biometric Data Collection in U.S. Immigrant Communities and Beyond" the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) takes approximately 300,000 fingerprints per day from non-U.S. citizens crossing the border into the United States. But it’s not just undocumented immigrants who are affected.