A US-based pharmaceutical and biotech company that provides US immigration authorities with equipment for mass DNA testing of detained immigrants and Rapid DNA testing of migrant families at the US–Mexico border.
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., headquartered in Waltham, Mass., is a provider of life sciences solutions, analytical instruments, specialty diagnostics, and laboratory products. It provides services to pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device companies; universities; hospitals; research institutions; and government organizations.
Thermo Fisher is a major provider of DNA testing equipment used by U.S. immigration authorities to carry out mass DNA testing of detained immigrants and Rapid DNA testing of migrant families at the U.S.–Mexico border.
Since 2020, the U.S. government has required the collection of DNA samples from all people arrested, charged, or convicted, as well as all non-U.S. citizens arrested or detained by federal immigration authorities Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If detained individuals refuse to provide DNA samples, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may pursue criminal prosecution.
DNA samples are stored in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Combined DNA Index System (CODIS). In 2020, the Department of Justice estimated that DHS agencies alone, namely CBP and ICE, will add some 750,000 samples to CODIS each year. In 2018, before the new DNA collection rule was implemented, DHS agencies added only 7,000 to this database.
Through its existing government contracts and commercial relationships, Thermo Fisher provides reagents—chemical substances used in DNA testing—to the FBI laboratory, which receives all CBP and ICE samples for testing. In 2023, for example, the FBI awarded Thermo Fisher subsidiary Life Technologies a contract worth a potential $15.9 million for reagents. Furthermore, Thermo Fisher holds the most authorizations for FBI use of PCR kits, a widely used method for testing DNA samples. The FBI lists 38 different types of PCR kits used as part of its DNA database, 18 of which are owned directly by Thermo Fisher or one of its subsidiaries.
Thermo Fisher was also involved in family separation under the Trump administration. In 2019, ICE launched a pilot program to prevent so-called “family unit fraud” by using Rapid DNA tests on migrant families crossing the U.S.–Mexico border. Under the policy, families that were tested and were found not to be biologically related faced various criminal charges, including human trafficking and child exploitation. DHS separated at least 3,914 children from their parents between 2017 and January 2021.
In June 2019, after a limited three-day “proof of concept” pilot using a different company, ICE awarded the first in a series of multi-million dollar contracts to Bode Cellmark Forensics, which exclusively uses Thermo Fisher’s RapidHIT ID system for its Rapid DNA testing.
While the government considers family testing to be “voluntary,” “failure to submit to Rapid DNA testing may be taken into account as one factor in ICE’s assessment of the validity of the claimed parent-child relationship,” potentially resulting in family separation or deportation. Furthermore, the policy defines a family exclusively based on biological ties, which does not accurately reflect other types of kinship, like adoption.
Despite the projected ending of the pilot program in March 2020, ICE has not given any indication that it will stop using Rapid DNA technology to test migrant families at the border. In the six months between October 2020 and March 2021, 76 families were subjected to Rapid DNA testing. There are no clear ICE protocols to establish which families are subject to Rapid DNA testing and which are not.
Rapid DNA testing is done in less than two hours using cheek swabs, and the samples are destroyed after obtaining the results. The DNA profiles are not stored in the FBI CODIS database, but DHS retains a record of the DNA test results. In July 2021, the FBI approved Thermo Fisher’s “RapidHit ID DNA Booking System for use by law enforcement booking stations to automatically process, upload and search DNA reference samples from qualifying arrestees against the U.S. National DNA Index System (NDIS).” Thermo Fisher is only the second company to receive this approval for its Rapid DNA equipment.
Rapid DNA technologies were developed with funding from the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. One of the first companies to receive funding for the IntegenX, which was subsequently acquired by Thermo Fisher in 2018. A 2017 report by the Swedish National Forensic Centre found that Integenx’s RapidHIT DNA profiling system has many problems, ranging from incorrect DNA profiles to low success rates. This has raised concerns, not only when it comes to the rights of immigrants, but also any person in police custody.
Other Controversies
Thermo Fisher has sold its DNA testing equipment to Chinese public agencies in Xinjiang, where 36 million people were swabbed for DNA samples in 2016 and 2017. The Chinese government claimed that it conducted this sampling to obtain physical and health data from Xinjiang’s residents, who are predominantly of Uyghur origin, a Muslim ethnic group that has been targeted by the Chinese government. Hundreds of thousands of Uygher Muslims in China have been persecuted and subjected to incarceration and forced labor in government “re-education” camps. While Thermo Fisher announced in 2019 that it would no longer sell these products to China, The New York Times uncovered in June 2021 that the company was still doing business with Chinese security agencies.
In October 2021, Thermo Fisher was sued for its role in the Henrietta Lacks affair. Lacks was an African American cancer patient whose tissue samples were kept without her consent by her doctors at Johns Hopkins University Hospital for experimental studies in 1951. While medical research using her cells led to major scientific breakthroughs, her family never consented to its use and was not even aware of it until decades later. The family sued Thermo Fisher for “unjust enrichment,” arguing that the company made “a conscious choice to sell and mass produce the living tissue of Henrietta Lacks…despite the corporation's knowledge that Ms. Lacks' tissue was taken from her without her consent by doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital and a racially unjust medical system.”