ACLU: DNA Collection of Immigrants Is ‘A Population Surveillance Tool

Speaker 1: 00:00 A lot about our border was revealed this week from the expanded collection of DNA from people in immigration custody to a report on corruption among the ranks of customs and border patrol officers. Joining me now is max Riverland Adler who just spoke with the SDSU professor who led the research on corruption among officers. We'll start with that first. Max, welcome. Hi first is this report give us an overall picture of how widespread corruption is among customs and border protection officers. Speaker 2: 00:28 So what this study did is it looked at uh, 11 years of reports that had been unearthed by journalists and investigators through FOYA freedom of information act into criminal cases involving border patrol officers and you know, they work for the larger customs and border protections agency. The finding was that, you know, basically these were serious allegations and found findings of corruption, but not necessarily one that is not indicative of a large agency. And specifically law enforcement agencies, which dr Jan [inaudible] who did the study says is, is basically law enforcement agencies because they're so shrouded in mystery, a lot of the time and secrecy that we just don't know the full extent of corruption across many of them. And however, this research focused specifically on a 160 cases that they were able to identify. And that was only done by investigative journalism. So to say that CBP is a corrupt organization isn't necessarily putting it in the larger context of, you know, basically we don't know. Speaker 2: 01:40 That's how corruption works. The things we don't know about. What type of corruption are we talking about here though? So three fourths of the study, a three fourths of the cases from the study involved human and drug smuggling, the basic nature of this corruption involved officers at the border allowing in drugs or helping to forge documents to allow people who had invalid passports or green cards to enter the country. So it was those types of corruption that the study on earth, uh, of course they were smaller issues involving, you know, uh, like I said, bribery, people exchanging favors for cash. Um, and, and it changed based on how long the agent had been in the agency. Speaker 1: 02:26 And I was just going to ask you about that. How does it change as officers are with the agency longer? Speaker 2: 02:31 Right. So what it found was that people who had been on the force for, you know, a month to five years, usually the 10 to the kind of corruption that they tended towards was drug smuggling. Uh, that is more kind of bang for your buck. You're able to wave on an drugs and get a pretty serious payday. It's, it's much easier to carry out and you're able to do it kind of under the watchful eye of your supervisors. The much harder type of corruption to pull off. And one that would mean that you would have to be much more of a senior official involves a human smuggling and getting people into the country who do not have the proper documents to be here. So that would be the person who is either forging kind of the documents themselves or helping those people have age check points. Uh, and that that would mean you would not have a supervisor above you. So you see how the characteristics of corruption change the longer you're on the floor. Speaker 1: 03:26 I see. Uh, this report comes at a time when the Trump administration is trying to increase the hiring of customs and border protection officers, right? Speaker 2: 03:33 Yeah, absolutely. And this is something that the doctor Jan six really focused on was that basically not only do you need to do more stricter background checks when you're hiring officers, but you need to continue to look into their conduct, right? Because so much of the corruption that he found happened pretty early on in a career of a border patrol officer. So, um, one thing that would need to be done in his estimation moving forward is his stricter background checks and basically verifying that somebody is still doing their job. On top of that where you're going to have, when you're have such a need for the amount of border patrol officers, you're going to lower your standards, right? Because they're having trouble hiring people. It's a very tough job. It doesn't pay so great. So you're lowering your standards already. You're way behind in the polygraph test that they like to have people take of or their connections to people who work with organized crime on either side of the border. So it's really creating an environment where corruption could thrive. Speaker 1: 04:34 And you asked the CBP a about how they'd make sure to keep up with the screening and scrutinizing of new and current agents. What was the response? Speaker 2: 04:43 A spokesperson told us that CBP requires a vigorous screening process for new applicants of which includes an exhaustive background investigation and that that background investigation continues every five years throughout their career. Of course, what the study found is that within that first five years you do have some serious instances of corruption Speaker 1: 05:03 and I want to switch gears again and talk to you about another border related story. The Trump administration is expanding DNA collection among immigrants. Does this include all immigrant and why is the admin administration looking to expand this policy? So this, Speaker 2: 05:19 according to a briefing, a background briefing by DHS officials earlier this week with the media, this includes all immigrants who are placed into detention along the Southern border, be this in border patrol custody at a border patrol station or ultimately in immigration detention like we see in OTA Mesa. Um, they are not necessarily being very forthcoming about why they would like to do this. Um, one thing that they really stressed is that they always had this ability under a 2005 law to collect a DNA from, from immigrants. They just didn't because they're not being charged criminally, they're being charged civilly. But what happens when you take somebody's DNA and what they're planning to do is to upload it to the FBI's DNA database. And so basically you're going to have this huge, um, database that's filled with people who have given up their DNA due to some, uh, criminal charges or criminal convictions. And you're also going to take this large, civilly detained population who have not been charged with a crime. I've been speaking to KPBS reporter max Riverland Adler, who we'll have a full story on the SDSU CBP corruption report Monday. Max. Thank you very much. Thank you.