Original article (in Slovenian) was published on 01/06/2023
The United States Customs and Border Protection uses rapid DNA tests only when familial ties between children and adult migrants in whose company they are cannot be verified based on documents and interviews.
The Nova24TV.si portal reported on 23 May, quoting data from 2022, that “one in ten migrant children” who tried to illegally cross the border between the United States and Mexico is not related to the adults who accompanied them.
The article Biden to boost child trafficking on southern border claimed that the U.S. would stop using rapid DNA tests on 31 May to verify claimed familial relationships between children and adult migrants.
The U.S. authorities have conducted such testing since May 2019, having introduced it as a tool to detect fake families. Under a 2019 decision by a district court in California, the Department of Homeland Security must confirm any suspicion that an adult and a child are not related with a rapid DNA test before the are separated.
According to a report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General of February 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Protection conducted 3,516 rapid DNA tests between June 2019 and September 2021. The tests were used when family relationships could not be confirmed with documents or interviews. In 300 cases they could not confirm claimed parent-child relationships.
The report also includes the number of families who tried to cross the Mexico-U.S. border: from July 2019 until September 2021, a period a month shorter than the period of reporting about DNA tests, over 650,000 families tried to cross the border.
Nova24TV.si said the data were for 2022 and cited the American portal Dailywire.com as a source. The portal often reports inaccurately and in a biased way, according to an analysis by Mediabiasfactcheck.com, a portal that verifies the accuracy of reporting and political bias of the media. Neither Dailywire.com nor Nova24TV.si cited a source for the data on the results of DNA testing.
Razkrinkavanje.si has reached out to U.S. Customs and Border Protection asking whether the data for 2022 are already available and is still awaiting their response.
Dailywire.com cited reporting by Justthenews.com, which Mediabiasfactcheck.com labels as unreliable. This is the portal that released the alleged memo by U.S. Customs and Border Control supposedly notifying border officials that the contract with the supplier of DNA tests expires on 31 May. The memo says this ends the DNA testing of migrant families.
According to currently available information, U.S. Customs and Border Control has not confirmed that the memo is genuine. We are still waiting for their reply.
We have informed Nova24tv.si of our findings and will publish their response when we receive it.
The claim by Nova24TV.si that one in ten children who tried to cross the Mexico-U.S. border in 2022 were not related to adult migrants who accompanied them is manipulative.
