SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond has sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging the federal government to reimplement DNA testing along the southern border.
On June 1, U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped all DNA testing for families and migrants.
The Biden administration never provided specific reasons as to why it was ending the program only to say it was not renewing the contract of the private company in charge of the DNA testing.
Desmond says this is the wrong decision in light of the rise in human trafficking and missing children along the border.
“Unfortunately, a lot of that human trafficking is that of children, and children coming across the border,” he said.
In his letter to Bide, Desmond said, “The recent termination of DNA family testing by the Biden Administration is a distressing decision that puts innocent lives at risk and undermines our commitment to combating the heinous crimes of human trafficking and child exploitation.”
Desmond said individuals fraudulently claiming children as their own and subsequently separating them from their true guardians is “harrowing and unacceptable.”
He wants the testing to resume “without delay.”
“If people want to be legit and bring their families across the border and they want to apply for asylum, that’s fine, let’s do that, but let’s have a safe way to do that, for now we don’t know if families are truly families or not.”
Desmond told Border Report that DNA testing at the border will cut down on the number of children exploited by human traffickers.
“We need these tools in place so we can stop human trafficking,” he said. “It’s not invasive, it’s just a swab to make sure these children and it’s just to make sure these children are the right children. We’ve heard from Border Patrol agents that they’ve seen the same parents come across a couple of times with different families and there’s no way for them to say these are not your kids.”
Desmond said he has not heard back from the White House or CBP about his request to restart DNA testing for migrants.
Border Report reached out to the White House about the possibility the testing will be reimplemented, but our emails have not been answered.
