Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

I’m Lauren Harper, the first Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy at Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), and welcome to “The Classifieds.” This week, both Wired and 404 Media made must-read immigration stories free because of their commitment to making reporting based on public records available to all. Read on to see what these stories uncovered, and more of this week’s top secrecy news.

CBP took DNA samples of 133,000 minors, stores them in criminal database

Between 2020 and 2024, Customs and Border Protection collected DNA samples from over 133,000 migrant children, at least one as young as 4, and uploaded the data into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System database. It’s unclear why DNA from so many minors warrants inclusion in a criminal database, or how long the government will store the information. The Justice Department, which oversees the FBI, gave a paltry and unsatisfying answer to these questions, saying the data could “help solve crimes that may be committed in the future.”

The published data was collected entirely during the Biden administration and made available on CBP’s website earlier this year. (At the same time this data was being collected, MIT Technology Review reported that the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Biometric Identity Management was interested in using facial recognition technology “to track the identities of migrant children, ‘down to the infant,’ as they age,” reporter Eileen Guo wrote last year. Read more here.) It’s not yet known how many DNA samples have been collected during the first few months of the Trump administration.

The latest on this blockbuster story from Wired’s Dhruv Mehrotra is free for all to read thanks to the outlet’s commitment to make reporting based on Freedom of Information Act requests available to everyone.

ICE uses national database of automated license plate readers in investigations without formal contract

404 Media, which also makes FOIA-based reporting free, has another disturbing immigration story.

Data obtained from a public records request to the Danville Police Department in Illinois and shared with 404 shows that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have found a backdoor into security-tech firm Flock Safety’s nationwide network of automated license plate reader cameras — even though ICE does not have a contract with Flock.

ICE works around the lack of a formal contract by asking local authorities to perform searches on ICE’s behalf. Local law enforcement indicated that they performed the searches in the Flock database, sometimes as an “informal favor,” to help ICE conduct investigations, carry out warrants, and conduct enforcement and removal operations. This effectively gives ICE a window into the movements of residents of the 5,000 communities across the U.S. that do have contracts with Flock and are consequently surveilled by their network of tens of thousands of devices.

Needless secrecy continues to place corporate profits over public health

NBC News reported in April that needless government secrecy surrounding an E. coli outbreak from contaminated romaine lettuce was threatening public health. The outbreak killed one and sickened dozens more, but the Food and Drug Administration did not tell the public what happened. A redacted FDA report obtained through FOIA even hides the names of the companies the FDA investigated, ostensibly “because no contaminated lettuce was left by the time investigators uncovered where the pathogen was coming from.”

Nearly two months later, The Washington Post reports that this ongoing secrecy is made more dangerous by the Trump administration’s decision to disband “a Justice Department unit that pursues civil and criminal actions against companies that sell contaminated food” and suspension of “a program known as the Food Emergency Response Network Proficiency Testing that ensures food-testing labs accurately identify pathogens that can sicken or kill.”

The FDA had nearly two months to correct course between NBC’s April piece and the recent Washington Post article and finally disclose more of this essential public health information. But it is continuing to place a prosecrecy, antiregulatory agenda over public health concerns.

What I’m reading

Eric Trump starts nonprofit to build his father’s presidential library (The New York Times). President Donald Trump’s son Eric has incorporated the nonprofit Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation in Florida, making it the second Trump presidential library foundation that will be able to solicit bribes (including bogus multimillion dollar defamation settlements and a $400 million plane) in the name of building a library. Of course, as ABC’s January settlement makes clear, the money is going to the establishment of a private foundation, which does not have to build a government-run library at all.

These historians oversee unbiased accounts of US foreign policy. Trump fired them all. (The Washington Post). Petula Dvorak has a great piece on the dangers of Trump firing the State Department’s Historical Advisory Committee, which oversees the department’s declassification efforts and the publication of the world’s largest transparency project, the Foreign Relations of the United States series. The big picture takeaway: the accuracy and objectivity of our foreign policy records are at stake.

Thanks for reading, and see you next time.

Transparently yours,

Lauren Harper

Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy
Freedom of the Press Foundation