U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is expanding its use of rapid DNA testing to verify biological family relationships, following a new federal contract worth more than $10 million.
Federal contracting records show that ICE awarded SNA International a one-year delivery order worth up to $10,099,513 for rapid DNA tests, equipment and related services for Enforcement and Removal Operations field offices. The contract began August 10, 2026, and is scheduled to run through August 9, 2027. Its official government description says the program is intended to help ICE field offices “verify biological relatives.”
The development was also highlighted in an August 2026 post on X by @KCRepublicanH, which drew attention to ICE’s plans to expand rapid DNA testing.
What exactly is ICE buying?
The new order covers more than laboratory tests alone. Federal records describe a system that includes rapid DNA tests, equipment and services for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations offices.
The broader ICE contract behind the program is even larger. A Government Accountability Office decision from November 2025 describes ICE’s contract with SNA International as a program to provide staff and resources for rapid DNA testing, including software support, a centralized support center, testing supplies, processing instruments, test kits, swabs and training. That underlying contract has a two-year ordering period and an estimated value of about $28.5 million.
The latest $10.1 million delivery order is therefore part of a broader rapid DNA infrastructure already being developed by ICE.
This is not ICE’s first rapid DNA program
Rapid DNA testing in immigration enforcement is not new.
ICE began using the technology during the first Trump administration. A Department of Homeland Security privacy assessment published in 2019 said ICE was deploying rapid DNA technology to determine whether adults and children presenting themselves as family units actually had a biological parent-child relationship.
That earlier system was designed to compare the DNA profiles of an adult and child and provide a result in roughly 90 minutes. DHS said the purpose was to either confirm legitimate parent-child relationships or identify potentially fraudulent ones.
SNA International has also received previous ICE funding for the same general purpose. A May 2025 delivery order worth about $6.2 million provided rapid DNA tests, equipment and services to ICE field offices to verify biological relatives.
The new $10.1 million order represents a significant expansion of that investment.
Why ICE says the testing is necessary
The federal government has long argued that familial DNA testing can help identify cases in which adults falsely claim unrelated children as family members.
According to the GAO’s review of the ICE contract, the program is intended in part to identify fraudulent familial relationship claims made by people entering or attempting to enter the United States. (
From an enforcement perspective, a rapid DNA test offers a relatively straightforward answer to a specific question: are two people biologically related in the way they claim?
But the same technology can also have another practical benefit that receives much less attention.
Sometimes proving a real family relationship is surprisingly difficult
On paper, proving that someone is your child may seem simple.
In real life, family records can cross countries, languages and legal systems. A mother may have given birth under her maiden name and now carry a married surname. Another person may have married more than once or later returned to a previous surname.
Birth certificates may use older names or different spellings. Some government forms may not even provide a separate field for a maiden or previous surname.
For immigrant families, the problem can become even more complicated when records were issued in different countries.
A person may be required to obtain an original record from another country, have it certified or legalized, obtain an official translation and then submit additional records showing how one surname became another.
Travel restrictions can turn that bureaucratic process into an even larger obstacle. During the COVID-19 pandemic, international travel restrictions and limited access to government offices made obtaining foreign records particularly difficult.
A genuine mother-child relationship does not become less genuine because one government record contains a maiden name and another contains a married name.
Yet administratively, that difference can create a serious problem.
DNA does not depend on a surname
That is one of the clearest practical arguments in favor of DNA testing.
A DNA test does not have to reconstruct a history of surnames.
It does not matter whether one document was issued in the United States and another in Bosnia, Montenegro, Mexico or another country.
It does not depend on whether a form includes a field for “maiden name.”
It answers a much narrower biological question: are these people biologically related?
For families whose paperwork is complicated, an official DNA test can potentially resolve in a short period of time what might otherwise require weeks or months of documents, translations and correspondence between institutions.
That does not mean DNA should automatically replace traditional documentation. But it can serve as an important additional method when documentary evidence is incomplete, inconsistent or unusually difficult to obtain.
Biological family and legal family are not always the same
There is also an important limitation.
DNA can prove biological relationships. It cannot determine every legitimate family relationship.
Adoptive parents, stepparents and legal guardians may have completely valid relationships with children without sharing their DNA.
A negative DNA result therefore does not automatically mean that a person has no legitimate legal or parental relationship with a child.
That distinction is particularly important in immigration proceedings, where legal custody and guardianship may matter independently of biology.
Privacy concerns are real
The practical benefits of rapid DNA testing do not eliminate concerns about privacy.
DNA is uniquely sensitive personal information.
ICE’s own privacy assessment acknowledged that rapid DNA testing creates privacy risks and said the agency established safeguards intended to keep the program focused on determining biological parent-child relationships.
The 2019 assessment described the process as a limited comparison between two DNA profiles rather than a broader genetic analysis intended to reveal medical conditions, ancestry or physical characteristics.
Still, as the program expands, several questions become increasingly important.
Who can be asked to take the test? Under what circumstances? What happens if a person refuses? How are samples handled? How long are results retained? Who can access them? And can information originally collected for relationship verification later be used for another purpose?
Those are legitimate questions whenever a government enforcement agency collects genetic material.
A balance between convenience and oversight
Rapid DNA technology illustrates a broader tension in modern immigration enforcement.
Used carefully, it can potentially simplify the lives of people who are genuinely related but struggle to prove it because of complicated records, foreign documentation, surname changes or missing paperwork.
It can also help authorities identify fraudulent claims.
At the same time, expanding government access to DNA requires clear limits and strong safeguards.
The technology itself is capable of answering a simple biological question very quickly.
The larger issue is how that answer is obtained, how the information is protected and what happens to it afterward.
With ICE now committing another $10.1 million to rapid DNA tests, equipment and services, genetic verification appears likely to play a larger role in immigration enforcement during the coming year.
Sources: Federal contracting records on the August 2026 ICE/SNA International delivery order; U.S. Government Accountability Office decision on ICE’s Rapid DNA Program; Department of Homeland Security Rapid DNA Privacy Impact Assessment; Newsweek; prior ICE/SNA International contract records; and the August 2026 X post by @KCRepublicanH.
By NJ RADAR Team