Collection of migrants’ DNA has increased by 5,000% in three years in a ‘massive expansion of genetic surveillance’
US immigration authorities are collecting and uploading the DNA information of migrants, including children, to a national criminal database, according to government documents released earlier this month.
The database includes the DNA of people who were either arrested or convicted of a crime, which law enforcement uses when seeking a match for DNA collected at a crime scene. However, most of the people whose DNA has been collected by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), the agency that published the documents, were not listed as having been accused of any felonies. Regardless, CBP is now creating a detailed DNA profile on migrants that will be permanently searchable by law enforcement, which amounts to a “massive expansion of genetic surveillance”, one expert said.
How did reptilian things that looked something like crocodiles get to the Caribbean islands from South America millions of years ago? They probably walked.
The existence of any prehistoric apex predators in the islands of the Caribbean used to be doubted. While their absence would have probably made it even more of a paradise for prey animals, fossils unearthed in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic have revealed that these islands were crawling with monster crocodyliform species called sebecids, ancient relatives of crocodiles.
While sebecids first emerged during the Cretaceous, this is the first evidence of them lurking outside South America during the Cenozoic epoch, which began 66 million years ago. An international team of researchers has found that these creatures would stalk and hunt in the Caribbean islands millions of years after similar predators went extinct on the South American mainland. Lower sea levels back then could have exposed enough land to walk across.
‘Erika’, 24, gained public attention after lawyer said federal agents denied him access to her in a Tucson hospital
A Guatemalan immigrant who crossed the US border eight months pregnant and gave birth in Arizona has avoided fast-track deportation after intervention by the state’s governor, her lawyer and a federal official said on Saturday.
The 24-year-old woman gained public attention after lawyer Luis Campos said federal agents had denied him access to her in a Tucson hospital after she gave birth on Wednesday and told him she was set for rapid removal after entering the country illegally.
Having fled here from Chile after Pinochet seized power in 1973 my father feared the state’s arbitrary power to turn lives upside down. His outlook has never felt more relevant
“Don’t open the door to nobody,” my father warned throughout my childhood – right up until the day he died. He trusted no politicians, no organized religion and definitely no strangers knocking unannounced.
US vice-president spends few minutes with pontiff whom he has publicly disagreed with over migration
Pope Francis and JD Vance, who have disagreed very publicly over the Trump administration’s attitude to immigration and its migrant deportation plans, met briefly in Rome on Sunday to exchange Easter greetings.
The meeting came a day after the US vice-president, who converted to Roman Catholicism in 2019, sat down with senior Vatican officials and had “an exchange of opinions” over international conflicts and immigration.
Alberto Lovo Rojas fled violence in his home country. Now, he fears Trump-backed deportation
It finally happened while he was waiting to get his hair cut.
Alberto Lovo Rojas, an asylum seeker from Nicaragua, had been feeling uneasy for weeks, worried that immigration officials would arrest him any moment. But he had pushed the worry aside as irrational – after all, he had a permit to legally work in the US, and he had been using an app to check in monthly with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).
Former officials question the reason for a Doge engineer’s access to the Unaccompanied Alien Children portal
A member of Elon Musk’s unofficial “department of government efficiency” gained access to a government system that contains the personal data of unaccompanied immigrant children, according to a recent court filing.
The database, called the Unaccompanied Alien Children portal (UAC), contains extremely detailed information about thousands of minors who enter the United States alone, including individual children’s mental health and therapy records, as well as immigration records, photos and addresses of their family members.
Trump also says in interview he was ‘very angry’ with Putin and threatened to bomb Iran – key US politics stories from 30 March 2025
Donald Trump has said there are “methods” – if not “plans” – to circumvent the constitutional limit preventing US presidents from serving three terms, in an explosive interview in which he also said he was “very angry” with Vladimir Putin, threatened to bomb Iran and did not rule out using force in Greenland.
In the interview, which aired Sunday on NBC, Trump told host Kristen Welker regarding a third term that “there are methods which you could do it”. Trump has repeatedly raised the possibility of serving a third term but has often masqueraded it as a joke. But on Sunday, he confirmed he was “not joking”.
The Census Bureau published new estimates about net domestic migration for counties.
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New Census Bureau data showed what moving looked like across the country last year.
Among big counties, two Georgia locations had the highest share of net movers coming in.
Losing population due to people moving out was common in California, Illinois, and Iowa.
Tons of Americans are moving to Dawson and Jackson counties in Georgia, based on new data.
The Census Bureau released on Thursday data showing net domestic migration — or how many people moved into a county from elsewhere in the US minus those who left that county — for the 3,144 counties and county-equivalents in the US, alongside new population estimates. The data covered the year between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024.
You can hover over the map below to see what those net moving rates looked like after taking into account a county’s population. The adjusted figure allows for better comparison between locations of varying sizes.
Many of California’s counties experienced negative net domestic migration. That was also the case for Iowa and Louisiana. Maine had the opposite experience, with all of its counties experiencing more people moving in than out domestically.
More counties in Tennessee, Virginia, and Florida had positive net domestic migration than negative.
Business Insider looked at rates for the counties with populations of at least 20,000 people and identified which ranked the highest for positive and negative net domestic migration. Rates were adjusted by 2023 populations.
Among the large counties with more people moving in than out domestically, Dawson and Jackson counties in Georgia took the toptwo spots. Almost of the top 10 were places in the South.
Other Southern counties ranked highly among the big counties with negative net domestic migration rates per 1,000 people. The top three were all in Mississippi. A few other places in the South were among the top 10 for negative rates.
