The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service isn’t normally thought of as a big consumer of technology.
But there is one item high on the Department of Homeland Security agency’s wish list. CIS needs a portable device that can rapidly test a subject’s DNA in order to verify claimed family relationships, said agency associate director Greg Smith, who heads the national security and records verification direcorate.
Such a device is needed for both overseas and domestic use. Abroad, the test would be used in refugee camps to process humanitarian petitions of those seeking asylum in the United States. Many of these refugees have large families.
The agency previously conducted surveys in two refugee camps to see if it was doing a good job of vetting the petitioners’ family relationships. It found a staggering 80 percent rate of non-correspondence between what was claimed and what later showed up in DNA tests.
One of these camps was known to have a strong al-Qaida presence, so refugee processing was immediately shut down there, Smith said.
“This is something one hates to do because these people have been in these camps a long time, but you have to do it until this new capability is in place,” he said.
It could also be used to stop overseas adoption fraud. There have been cases of women putting children up for adoption. But it later turned out that they weren’t the children’s birth mothers and that they were part of kidnapping or baby-selling schemes.
Along with making the devices rugged enough for the harsh conditions in refugee camps, the cost-per-test factor is crucial, Smith said. Current DNA tests are well beyond the financial means of refugees, or family members in the United States who might be trying to bring them here.
The desired device must cost less than $100 per test and return a result within 45 minutes, Smith said. If industry can come up with this technology it would “radically improve the integrity of our programs.”