Exceptional Injustice: Interrogating Public Comments on Migrant DNA Collection at the Border

Abstract: Federal regulations requiring the collection of DNA from migrants detained at the US border have faced bipartisan opposition. This cross-disciplinary panel argues that how stakeholders articulate their opposition matters for how we collectively conceive of and argue for the agency (or "humanity") of migrants. The moderator and first presenter, a public health ethicist, will provide an overview of the relevant federal regulation and current state of the practice of migrant DNA collection. She will also review the findings of a study examining the public comments that were submitted in response to the regulation's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), identifying key themes that emerged. The second speaker, a genetic counselor and bioethicist, will situate these findings in the context of genetic exceptionalism, which treats genetic information as more inherently personal, private, and sensitive than other data. The third speaker, a science and technology studies scholar and bioethicist, will build on these presentations and examine how taking seriously the view that it is morally wrong to collect genetic information from detained migrants generates broader conclusions about the agency of migrants and others subject to detention and incarceration. The panelists will then engage the audience in a conversation about the role of arguments for autonomy and privacy in broader debates about migrant and criminal justice, focusing on the relationship between data from public comments and conceptual analysis of federal policies that restrict autonomy.