Violent criminals and child traffickers took advantage after the Department of Homeland Security refused to follow a law mandating it take DNA samples from illegal immigrants at the border.
Three former WMD officials presented evidence to senators on Tuesday showing that DHS and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) blocked their efforts to comply with a 2005 law and even retaliated against them after they blew the whistle.
“Given the enormous potential of DNA collection to facility solving crimes, we took our job seriously,” Fred Wynn said.
Law enforcement experts from CBP’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) unit failed to implement mandatory programs for DNA tests after higher-ups thwarted it and disbanded the M.D. division, according to the whistleblowers.
Disbanding the division not only opened the United States to a WMD attack but also allowed hundreds of thousands of children to stay with people who claimed to be relatives but were child laborers or sex traffickers.
Mark Jones, former acting director of CBP’s WMD unit, said, “The DNA tool is invaluable, especially when establishing family units.”
More than half a million “unaccompanied minors” crossed the border illegally and been allowed to remain in the U.S., and are “reunited” with those claiming to be their relatives, who have sometimes been traffickers.
Jones said the WMD team had its responsibilities stripped.
“Certain senior officials were hell-bent on slow-rolling any process or pilot program that enabled DNA collection,” he said.
Jones heard the special assistant to the Customs and Border Protection chief say that “the Commissioner does not want to do this” in 2018, while another official said, “If we have to, we will get the press to capture us forcibly taking DNA from an 89-year old woman to garner outrage.”
The same year, DHS “shut down the DNA collection pilot program and disbanded the WMD division,” and Jones was demoted three levels, he said.
Another whistleblower, Mike Taylor, said they repeatedly reached out to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas but were ignored.
In 2015, Congress passed a law requiring the DNA testing of criminals and illegal immigrants.
In 2010, Obama‘s DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder asking for a postponement, saying, “We intend to phase-in implementation over the next year.”
In August 2019, the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) found that DHS’s “noncompliance with the law has allowed subjects subsequently accused of violent crimes, including homicide and sexual assault, to elude detection even when detained multiple times by CBP.”
The report highlights an illegal immigrant who committed multiple sexual assaults in Arizona in 1997. While the individual had the DNA of the perpetrator, they could not find a match because the suspect was not in the system.
However, the crime was only solved because the suspect went on to go to prison for another crime, and had his DNA taken.
OSC found that DHS retaliated against the whistleblowers in 2021 due to “displeasure with the Complainants’ perceived and actual involvement in bringing to light the agency’s intentional, decade-long failure to implement a law.”
The office lambasted DHS for retaliation in the strongest possible terms.
In 2022, DHS took Jones’ and Taylor’s badges, guns, and law enforcement credentials, and Taylor lost his law enforcement retirement pension despite 20 years of service.
In 2023, the DHS said the whistleblowers’ claims were conspiracy theories, issuing another misleading statement: “The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) terminated its investigation into these claims without issuing a Prohibited Personnel Practice Report or seeking corrective action.”
As The Daily Wire reported:
Recently, CBP has engaged in limited DNA testing of illegals—37% in fiscal year 2023. Even with that subset, it matched the DNA of 1,037 wanted, violent criminals. Illegal immigrant DNA was responsible for 42% of all crimes solved using the FBI’s DNA database.
But that meant that nearly two million illegals in DHS custody did not get DNA swabbed that year. Jones noted that “we like” missed over 1,600 violent criminals in 2023 alone” based “on the match rate of the smaller sample.
So far, in fiscal year 2024, DNA testing of illegal immigrants has matched the DNA of people wanted in 10 homicides and 145 sex offenses.
The limited DNA testing belatedly implemented by DHS has been carried out in a way that ensures it won’t stwon’town violent criminals from being allowed to stay in the country. Although the technology exists to take and process a cheek swab on site in 90 minutes, DHS mails the samples to FBI headquarters and gets the results back months later. By that time, the illegal immigrants have already been released.
Failing to use rapid, on-site technology means the DNA samples will only be useful in identifying the illegal aliens if they commit crimes in the future.
The more illegal immigrants are tracked with their DNA, the more crimes they are tied to—an uncomfortable fact for Democrats who claim that illegal immigrants do not commit crimes.
In June, a man wielding a machete tied up and sexually assaulted two 13-year-old girls in New York, and DNA from the victims tied the crime to an illegal immigrant Christian Inga, who was swabbed at the border in 2021.
In 2023, a Maryland mother of five, Rachel Morin, was raped and murdered at the hands of Victor Martinez-Hernandez, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador
While Maryland police had a DNA sample of the perpetrator, they had nothing to compare to it, due to his DNA never being taken despite being captured at the border three times,
Maryland police then identified Hernandez by comparing his DNA to that of his relatives.
Maryland police ultimately identified Hernandez by comparing his DNA to that of his relatives.
READ: ‘MK-Ultra’ Survivor Launches Anti-Child Sex Trafficking Initiative
