There are reports that the Trump administration is using DNA testing to reunite separated families at the border. According to Trump’s critics:

“This is a further demonstration of administration’s incompetence and admission of guilt. This further drives home the point we’ve been saying: They never registered parents and children properly,” RAICES communications director Jennifer K. Falcon said.

Falcon also said it’s not possible the migrant children — some as young as two months old — are giving their consent to DNA testing.

The organization said they’d never heard of conducting DNA tests to reunite families before and they don’t support the move.

They may never have heard of it, but perhaps they’ve heard of Google? Because it’s not that difficult to find articles about it that pre-date Trump, such as this one from 2014:

The right to family reunification has been an integral part of many countries’ immigration policies, and is derived from the protection of the family as laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights…However, many countries are enforcing more restrictive family reunification policies, imposing stricter requirements on those applying to enter the country. Even if applicants possess the documents required to prove their identities, the information is often rejected by immigration authorities, as they question their authenticity.

In this context, many countries resort to parental testing. Applicants are required to provide official documentation to prove their identities, such as birth and marriage certificates and passports. Providing such information is often difficult, especially in countries that do not use official documents to establish identity, or where those documents have been lost or destroyed due to politically unstable situations. But even if applicants possess the required documents, immigration authorities sometimes reject the information as they question their authenticity.

In the 1990s, some host countries began to use DNA analysis to resolve cases in which they considered the information presented on family relationships to be incomplete or unsatisfactory. Today, at least 20 countries around the world, including 16 European countries, have incorporated parental testing into decision-making on family reunification in immigration cases: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, the UK, and the USA.

USA? Under Obama? Now, fancy that.

Now, it’s not the same circumstances as the current ones with illegal immigrants at the border. The article is mostly describing the sort of family reunification that involves legal immigrants already here, who have applied to bring over other family. However, the idea is similar—which is that they must prove these people are actually family. And as the family of legal immigrants, one would think their rights would and should be greater than those of illegal immigrants, not less. And yet they are still subject to DNA testing in circumstances in which the documentation is not sufficient.

More here, this time about Germany:

However, German immigration offices will not necessarily accept these pieces of evidence for an existing family relation, and even in cases where legal documents are provided, it is a common administrative practice to ask the applicants for a DNA kinship report. There has been press coverage of a case where more than ten pieces of evidence were provided to the immigration authorities, but not accepted. Moreover, the German Federal Foreign Office has published a list of over 40 countries whose documents are not acknowledged by German embassies at all, because they assume that their system of identity registration lacks systematic and sound procedures. Applicants from these countries will find it extremely difficult to prove a family relationship by means of official documents or alternative pieces of evidence. To obtain permission to reunite with family members, they generally have to resort to DNA testing. Even German citizens may be asked to provide DNA evidence for their biological relation if they apply for family reunification with a foreign spouse and children from one of these blacklisted countries.

The use of DNA testing is considered to be an appropriate measure to prevent fraudulent uses of family reunification.1

The article goes on to say it’s frequently used in Germany, not seldom used.

Here’s an article that focuses more on the US. It was published in February of 2016, so it’s also pre-Trump.

DNA testing policy was officially implemented [in the US] on July 14, 2000, through an administrative memorandum written by Michael D. Cronin, then Executive Associate Commissioner of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The goal of the memorandum was to “provide guidance” to the USCIS field offices about using DNA testing for parentage verification within the family reunification process.

The policy has several key facets. It states that testing is voluntary in that the immigration official may only suggest, not require, DNA testing. The policy also cautions immigration officers that DNA testing should only be used when necessary. Per the policy, DNA testing must be paid for by the petitioners…Once the immigration official in charge of the case receives the test results, he or she weighs the test results in the context of other evidence and makes a decision.

Under the current policy, DNA testing essentially functions as the gold standard to validate the authenticity of the claimed relationship in cases where documents cannot validate it.

If it was fine then; why not now? Trump.

Here’s another article about what they do in Europe (it’s from December 2016), describing a situation more analogous to the one in the US that we’re talking about today: children who come with a purported relative who may not be a relative. It mentions that if the children are kept with that adult, it can entail serious risk because that person can be a smuggler or abusing the child:

According to the Protocol on unaccompanied children, DNA testing must be performed on children at risk. In practice, however, DNA tests are only carried out at sea-port border points – Algeciras, Tarifa, Motril and Malaga, all of which are in the Andalusian Autonomous Community – and in the Autonomous Cities of Ceuta and Melilla. Tests are not used for children arriving at the airport.

Establishing the family links between the child and the accompanying adult is often difficult given the lack of documentation or spelling mistakes when registering. The same family name is often spelled differently on the documents issued to the persons, which sometimes hampers proving a family connection.

DNA tests, as used in some parts of Spain and in some cases in Slovakia, are not a possibility available to all Member States given their high cost.

So, cost seems to often be a limiting factor.

It’s also the case that DNA doesn’t help in a family in which adoption has purportedly taken place, or can cause problems when there has been infidelity on the part of the mother that led to the conception of the child.

[NOTE: Here’s a piece about abuse of the asylum system in the US.]