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The US Gov Is Planning To Take DNA From Detained Immigrants

Um, what happened to having rights?!

In today’s absolutely cooked American news, The Trump government wants to take DNA from detained immigrants.

They’re moving to collect DNA from hundreds of thousands of people that were kidnapped taken into custody for being ‘illegal’, and they’re lodging that DNA into their national criminal database. The New York Times reported that the Justice Department is developing the regulation that would give immigration officers the authority to actually collect this DNA.

Why This Is So Fucked Up

First of all, there is no such thing as an illegal refugee or asylum seeker. Under international law, everyone has the right to seek asylum, and if you are seeking asylum then you are allowed to enter a country regardless of your documentation.

Taking DNA from a population for virtually no reason is a huge violation of privacy and personal autonomy.  Generally, the FBI only obtains your DNA if you have been arrested, charged or convicted of serious crimes. People who shoplift don’t get their DNA sampled, but people accused of things like murder do, as it can be used to confirm their guilt.

The New York Times quoted Vera Eidelman, a staff lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project about the DNA collections.

“That kind of mass collection alters the purpose of DNA collection from one of criminal investigation basically to population surveillance, which is basically contrary to our basic notions of a free, trusting, autonomous society.”

Taking DNA also poses risk for relatives who may be documented or US citizens too, because of genetic connections. The new regulation would also allow the government to take DNA from children. I repeat. Children. Children who’s only ‘crime’ is to have immigrated with their families in the hopes of a better future.

Immigrants In America Are Under Attack, And So Are Our Refugees

Immigrants in America are already a hugely vulnerable and oppressed groups – if you know anything about American policies at all, you would see the blatant racism and quite frankly murderous attitude the Trump administration has towards them. Trump recently suggested shooting immigrants and having a moat of alligators or an electrified fence to ward off them off. He then denied the latter two on Twitter, but never retracted his statement on shooting immigrants – because apparently, that’s reasonable.

This dehumanisation of immigrants is actually disgusting and dangerous, and it’s terrifying to see. The detention centres for immigrants have been called modern day concentration camps, with Jewish protesters condemning ICE under the slogan ‘Never Again.’

Reading about ICE raids and immigrant detention centres in America is terrifying and sickening, but we can’t forget where these ideas came from.

In our detention centres, asylum seekers are dying. We have an absolutely atrocious refugee policy, and when we are disgusted by America’s treatment of refugees, we should remember what our government is up to as well. The Tamil refugee family making headlines for being kidnapped detained by our government (who’s two imprisoned children are AUSTRALIAN CITIZENS) are an example of how these practices spread.

Trump tweeted praise for our inhumane refugee policies, and then he attacked immigrants harder than ever. They learnt this from us.

Images: Twitter

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