immigrationcoalition "Video of the incident, reviewed by NPR, shows a masked federal officer running at Ben and slamming him to the ground. Three immigration officers pinned him down and dragged him to their vehicle. Ben says he was held in custody for about three hours. Before his release, officers photographed and fingerprinted him. Then, before Ben realized fully what was happening, an officer ran a swab, similar to a Q-tip, along the inside of his cheek. 'It was super casual,' Ben says. 'It was just like, 'okay, yeah so we're going to take this now.' NPR found five other people in Illinois, Oregon and Minnesota who described similar occurrences in recent months. In statements made under oath as part of lawsuits against the Trump administration's handling of immigration enforcement, they said they were arrested, seemingly without provocation, while protesting ICE and then had officers take or try to take what appeared to be a sample of their DNA. 'Are six cases enough to be concerned as a pattern? I think yes, because history tells us that what law enforcement is permitted to do, they tend to do more of,' says Erin Murphy, a law professor at New York University." https://www.npr.org/2026/03/18/nx-s1-5739257/ice-officers-dna-protesters-database View all 91 comments