Broadview protesters sue feds over DNA collection after arrests, saying it violates rights

Four Chicago-area protesters are suing the federal government over DNA samples taken after they were arrested while protesting outside the Broadview ICE facility.

Among the plaintiffs is 71-year-old Dana Briggs, an Air Force veteran from Rockford arrested Sept. 27 alongside co-plaintiff Ian Sampson, a 27-year-old financial services worker from Chicago. Grace Cooper and Jacqueline Guataquira, both 30-year-old area residents, were arrested Oct. 3 and also signed on to the suit.

Sampson and Cooper were arrested and detained but never charged with crimes; Briggs and Guataquira were, though the charges were later dropped — all related to accusations of impeding or assaulting a federal officer.

But DNA from all four remains in the federal government’s CODIS database, which is generally used for searching for criminals.

They allege the cheek swabs — and the creation of a DNA profile the federal government maintains in a database — violated their Fourth Amendment rights, according to the suit.

“DNA collection is no longer a booking procedure in service of a lawful arrest for the commission of a serious crime,” the suit reads. “It is part of a surveillance program that targets people for exercising their First Amendment rights.”

The Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection all didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Last February, Customs and Border Protection issued a directive saying its agents could collect DNA samples from anyone “arrested, facing charges, or convicted” as well as anyone without legal status. Agents were instructed to refer those who turn down the swabs for federal misdemeanor charges.

In Illinois, a grand jury would have to indict someone or a judge would have to make a finding that there’s reason to do so.

Those cases are among the 150,000 the FBI is collecting every month, which are filed into the 27 million DNA samples the federal government has in its CODIS database.

The suit argues that all four cases lacked probable cause and that what was alleged in them did not amount to “serious crimes” and took place before any judicial review. Taken together, the lawsuit condends, all of that makes the DNA collection an unreasonable search.

In Sampson's case, the government “collected his DNA without his consent, without any charge, and without any legal basis,” the lawsuit reads. “The government intends to retain it indefinitely.”

For Briggs, they did so “in the middle of the night, for a case in which, in a federal judge’s words, the government ‘swung and missed—multiple times,'" according to the lawsuit. "Nevertheless, the government intends to retain Mr. Briggs’s DNA indefinitely.”

The plaintiffs argue the sample collection is yet another arm in the federal surveillance state being used to chill free speech, along with “real-time facial-recognition scanning of protesters, bulk license-plate reader surveillance and social media monitoring that maps an individual’s associations and location history.”

A memo circulated to federal agents in Minneapolis earlier this year instructed them to “capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.” A lack of federal oversight of the database’s use adds to this concern, the plaintiffs allege in the suit.

They argue the DNA samples, with the federal government’s DNA database, could be used to target those related to protesters who are detained by the government. The suit alleges federal agents have collected DNA from at least 92 people not detained on immigration charges but who were arrested during Operation Midway Blitz.

And the onus for getting their sample removed from the federal database relies on them to collect the proper paperwork and get it to the FBI.

By federal law, the two plaintiffs who were not charged will have to wait five years until they can apply for their DNA to be expunged from the federal database. That's the length of the statute of limitations on the crime they were arrested for allegedly committing — in this case, impeding a federal officer. But even then, there’s no guarantee the sample will be destroyed, the lawsuit argues.

“The government’s chilling message is clear: If you protest government policies, we will arrest you, file away your DNA, and monitor you — and potentially your biological relatives — going forward,” the suit says.