DHS can’t build large DNA database to track ICE suspects, lawsuit says

Refusal to collect DNA is not an option

30-year-old Grace Cooper was also in a so-called “free speech space” when she was arrested in what she described as “the scariest 90 seconds of her life.”

It was his first time at the Broadview show, and Cooper didn’t know what to expect. On that day, Border Patrol agent Greg Bovino reportedly arbitrarily ruled that the designated emergency area was a “liberal arrest zone,” and ordered protesters to leave the area immediately or face arrest.

Although Cooper immediately turned to obey, the assistant grabbed him from behind and “threw him to the ground.” After his arrest, none of the agents could tell him what his crime was, and he said that the audience was debating what his plot might be.

Of the defendants, Cooper was the only one who refused a DNA sample. Such refusal is a crime, the complaint said, and agents did not allow him to refuse. After several hours, the agents released him without charge, leaving him “at a nearby gas station” and refusing to tell him anything about whether his case was still pending.

Like everyone else, Cooper’s “urgent fear” after his arrest was “what the government might do with his DNA.”

“He is worried that the government will use his DNA to put him on a ‘domestic criminal list’ and monitor his movements – in airports, during traffic stops, and in ways he would not expect or compete with,” he said.

Carey R. Dunne, founder of the Free + Fair Litigation Group, which is representing Briggs in the case, he told The New York Times that the defendants’ charges refer to “numerous violations of law that needed to be prosecuted.”

Unselected DNA collection “puts you and your family in a place where people have opposed this administration,” Dunne said, adding that “on a scale of 1 to 10, this is a 10.”

Briggs told the NYT that the case could clarify the DNA Act and restore privacy to many Americans who would be most affected by illegal DNA collection.

“If we don’t have freedom ourselves, everything will fall apart,” Briggs said.