New York
His DNA Was Taken After His Arrest at an ICE Protest. Now, He’s Suing.
For Dana Briggs, a 71-year-old Air Force veteran, it was only natural that he would join a September demonstration outside a Chicago detention center. He has regularly protested the Department of Homeland Security’s actions for more than a decade.
But this time, he would find himself inside a federal prison hours later. He said that while at the demonstration, he had been knocked to the ground by agents, swarmed and arrested, and had been taken to a hospital, where he was handcuffed to a bed. He was then transferred to the federal facility, and read his rights, fingerprinted and photographed.
So by the time Mr. Briggs was ordered to take a cotton swab and rub it against the inside of his cheek, he complied.
“If you refuse to give a swab, you’re committing another crime,” Mr. Briggs said in an interview. “I was unaware of that. And I suspect that 99.9 percent of us in this country are unaware of that.”
This week, Mr. Briggs became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the federal government’s DNA collection practice, arguing that his arrest and the collection of his sample violated his rights to protest and protections against the government conducting “warrantless, unreasonable intrusions” into his body.
The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of Illinois, names three other people as plaintiffs, two of whom were arrested but never charged with a crime.
“The government’s chilling message is clear,” the suit says. “If you protest government policies, we will arrest you, file away your DNA and monitor you — and potentially your biological relatives — going forward.”
In a directive issued last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that people who are arrested by its officers or who are facing charges or convicted must provide DNA samples. According to the directive, the agency will not use force to collect DNA samples but may refer people for prosecution if they don’t cooperate.
In Mr. Briggs’s case, he was released two days after his arrest, and the charges against him were dismissed two months later. The cases of four other protesters who were arrested that day were also dismissed. A federal judge found that the government “swung and missed — multiple times” in charging Mr. Briggs.
But while Mr. Briggs was freed, his DNA sample remained in federal custody.
Last year, Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology found that DNA samples were collected from about 2,000 U.S. citizens who were stopped at border checkpoints from October 2020 to December 2024. In some cases, the report found, the agency collected the DNA without stating a reason for doing so.
And that was before the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
During President Trump’s second term, federal deployments have swept through major cities, leading to a wave of protests and clashes between immigration agents and demonstrators. Many protesters have been arrested, and while some were not charged with a crime or have had their charges dismissed, their DNA samples have been collected and stored.
The lawsuit asks that the Homeland Security Department — the parent agency of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — be forced to follow a 2013 Supreme Court ruling that limited DNA collection to suspects arrested in connection with serious crimes.
“It puts you and your family in a surveillance state database of people who’ve criticized this administration,” said Carey R. Dunne, a founder of the Free + Fair Litigation Group, which represents Mr. Briggs. He called the government’s actions “a constellation of constitutional violations that needed to be challenged.”
Mr. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, another founder of the litigation group, had led the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into Mr. Trump’s business practices. They resigned in 2022 and, with a third founder, formed Free + Fair, a nonprofit law firm that aims to stem the tide of what it describes as anti-democratic policies in the United States.
The federal government’s DNA collection practice, on an “authoritarian scale of one to 10, this is a 10,” Mr. Dunne said. In a statement Wednesday evening, the Department of Homeland Security said that the agency is required under federal law to collect DNA samples. The Department of Justice did not responded to a request for comment.
In the decades since DNA was introduced as evidence in criminal cases, law enforcement agencies across the country have come to rely on it, particularly in solving cold cases.
DNA can be collected through an array of methods beyond swabs of saliva. In New York’s Gilgo Beach murder case, investigators used a sample from a discarded pizza crust to connect Rex Heuermann to four bodies found in 2010 on Long Island. Law enforcement agencies, including D.H.S. and the Police Department, have faced lawsuits over their DNA collection practices.
Over the span of about a month last year, the Trump administration launched a crackdown on illegal immigration in Chicago called Operation Midway Blitz. Throughout the operation, protesters gathered outside the Broadview ICE Detention Center facility, which had become the centerpiece of the administration’s crackdown.
On the morning of Sept. 27, Mr. Briggs left his home in Rockford, Ill., and traveled to Chicago to attend an Indigenous festival. On his way home, “appalled” by the administration’s actions, he stopped by the detention center.
About two hours after he arrived, a field commander yelled at the demonstrators to clear the streets, Mr. Briggs recalled. Seeing no people blocking the federal agents’ path, Mr. Briggs asked, “Why?”
“It was only about maybe eight to 10 seconds between the command to clear the streets and when I actually got knocked on the ground,” he said. “So even if I had wanted, I really didn’t have time or the energy at that point to actually get my butt off the streets.”
Video showed federal agents swarming Mr. Briggs and arresting him. He was taken inside the detention center for several hours before being transported to Loyola University Medical Center for medical treatment. At about 1 a.m., the agents took him to a federal facility, where he was read his Miranda rights, photographed, fingerprinted and ordered to provide a DNA sample.
The genetic material was sent to an F.B.I. database called CODIS that was created to gather information about convicted criminals and missing people and to assess evidence from crime scenes. According to the lawsuit, people who have been arrested are responsible for making sure their DNA is removed from the database when their charges are dismissed. Studies have shown that in most states, only a handful of DNA profiles added to the database have been expunged, the suit said.
In Mr. Briggs’s case, the lawsuit challenges the legality of collecting DNA from people arrested for “nonserious offenses.” The lawsuit also asserts that federal officials could use the DNA to draw inferences about people’s relatives, who did not consent or do anything wrong.
According to the lawsuit, the F.B.I. recently reported that the federal government had amassed about 27 million DNA profiles in a variety of cases and is collecting almost 150,000 DNA profiles monthly.
“I just find this to be abhorrent,” Mr. Briggs said. “If we don’t have a right to our own selves, everything is going to break down.”
How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.
We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?
Ellen Hagan grew up in a small town in Kentucky, and moved to New York City as quickly as she could after she graduated from college. She arrived a few weeks before Sept. 11, and tried to get her bearings in a city turned upside down.
She found a group of fellow young artists and writers who wanted to take advantage of everything they could in the city, on very limited budgets. They went to poetry readings and dance parties, and rented tiny apartments in the East Village.
All the while, Ms. Hagan was diligent about saving money, even when she had very little of it.
“I didn’t know what I was saving for, but I knew I wasn’t going to have a job that would give me a pension,” she said. “I wanted to make enough money to live the New York existence I was dreaming of.”
Twenty-five years later, Ms. Hagan and her husband, David Flores, whom she started dating in her early years in New York, have much more money than they used to. Still, they feel more anxious about money than they hoped they would at this point in their lives.
The couple both work at DreamYard, a Bronx arts nonprofit. Last year, they made $178,135 there collectively, with Ms. Hagan, 47, directing the poetry and theater programs, and Mr. Flores, also 47, serving as the head of visual art and design.
They typically bring in another $40,000 to $60,000 a year through their freelance work. Mr. Flores is an adjunct professor, a photographer and a filmmaker, and Ms. Hagan teaches at a graduate writing program and writes books and poetry. They try to set aside about 15 percent of their income each year to grow their savings.
The couple live in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan with their two daughters, who are 12 and 15.
Homeownership Doesn’t Solve Everything
As a young couple, Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores lived in a 400-square-foot East Village rental. When their rent started to tick up, Ms. Hagan began looking for a place to buy, seeing homeownership as a buoy that would all but guarantee a secure financial life in New York.
Sixteen years ago, the couple found a perfect apartment in Washington Heights and scrambled to cobble together a down payment. They pooled their savings to put a 15 percent down payment on the $335,000 home. Once they closed, they were left with only a few hundred dollars in savings, but were thrilled and relieved.
“I had this sense that when you buy, you’re set in New York City,” Ms. Hagan said.
The reality, she has found, is more complicated.
The couple’s mortgage payment is $1,300 a month, and their maintenance fees keep rising, partially as a result of a new local law that requires increased inspections and repairs for buildings. Local Law 11 boosted their maintenance by $462 a month, at least temporarily, to about $1,900 total. And when the building’s management installed a new security system, each unit had to chip in $95 a month for three months.
Ms. Hagan loves the apartment, but she worries that they may eventually be priced out of their neighborhood.
“This building isn’t going to be for us at some point,” she said. “This feels like, uh oh, they’re imagining people who have much higher incomes than we do.”
Keeping the Kids Busy
Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores, who each maintain packed calendars, have encouraged their daughters to adopt the same approach to city living.
“I’m definitely a proponent of, let’s fill your schedule and see what you love,” Ms. Hagan said.
The girls’ public school offers free debate and band classes before and after school, and they’ll appear this spring in the school’s productions of “Annie” and “The Addams Family.”
The girls are also enrolled in a free theater academy at the People’s Theatre and writing workshops at Uptown Stories, which has a pay-what-you-can system. Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores typically pay the full tuition, which is $800 for each 12-week session, and donate about $2,500 a year to the organizations their daughters are part of.
The couple’s older daughter, Araceli, who wants to be both a writer and a doctor, is enrolled in a medical training program for middle and high school students. She made $2,500 for completing an internship at a cardiothoracic intensive care unit last summer.
Their younger daughter, Miriam, is going to a Y.M.C.A. camp this summer, which costs $2,600 for two weeks.
Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores spent about $500 total on holiday gifts for both girls, and the couple doles out their daughters’ weekly allowances in two installments: $25 on Mondays and $25 on Fridays.
They shook their heads when Miriam, who is known as the most stylish member of the family, came home one day wearing a Dr Pepper T-shirt she’d bought at Target.
“We were like, ‘What are you doing with your money?’” Ms. Hagan said.
The Fun Stuff
The extra income from the couple’s freelance work allows the family to splurge on theater, vacations, books and memberships at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Sometimes, Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores work together. A few years ago, they sold a young adult novel called “Tell Me Every Lie” they had co-written for a $35,000 advance, some of which went to their agent.
Every little bit helps. The family is spending a weekend on Long Beach Island in New Jersey this summer, which will cost about $3,500. That price tag includes a hotel room big enough for four.
The family typically travels twice a year to Kentucky, where both Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores are from, and where the couple co-owns a home in Louisville with Mr. Flores’s parents. They put $40,000 down and spend about $12,000 annually on expenses related to the home.
The family was hoping to travel to the Philippines this year, where Mr. Flores’s father is from, but they realized it could cost as much as $15,000. The trip is now on hold indefinitely.
They spend about $700 a month on groceries from nearby supermarkets, and occasionally order grocery deliveries from FreshDirect.
Every Wednesday, when the girls come home late from theater class, someone picks up dinner at the nearby halal truck or the Dominican restaurant Malecon, which usually runs about $60.
Dinner out as a family of four can easily cost $200, so Ms. Hagan and Mr. Flores typically eat at restaurants just once or twice a month. The other night, the whole family was hungry and craved Italian food from a favorite upscale spot nearby.
They balked, and walked around the corner to a diner instead. The meal was $120, all in.
We are talking to New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a Democrat who has clashed with the Trump administration over immigration policies, joined protests outside a detention center in Newark on Monday in support of detainees participating in a hunger strike.
Ms. Sherrill heard from family members of detainees, who have complained about rotten and spoiled food and inadequate medical care at Delaney Hall. Dozens of protesters waved signs, banged on drums, and chanted “Free Them All!” The governor told the crowd she had requested access but was denied.
“No matter what your immigration status is, you shouldn’t be treated with anything less than dignity in this country,” said Ms. Sherrill, who was dressed in a T-shirt, jeans, and blue-gray jacket on the Memorial Day holiday. At one point, she rested her hand on the shoulder of a crying relative and smoothed the hair of an upset child.
After the governor left, the scene worsened outside the detention facility. A tense standoff erupted between Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and protesters who blocked an entrance; the agents responded by firing pepper balls and spray at the protesters. Senator Andy Kim, who was trying to de-escalate the situation, was among those affected.
On Monday, the governor and other elected officials, including Mayor Ras J. Baraka of Newark, appeared outside Delaney Hall amid growing concerns over the hunger strike, which started on Friday inside the gray, cinder-block building enclosed by a high chain link fence topped with razor wire.
Immigration advocates have rallied outside Delaney Hall since Friday. Detainees said they would go on a hunger and labor strike while calling for an investigation of the detention center and its operations and for Ms. Sherrill to visit to discuss protections from ICE. Hundreds of detainees were participating, one protester told Ms. Sherrill.
The governor said in a statement on Sunday that she had contacted ICE to gain access to the detention center and was working to monitor the situation and “do what’s necessary to ensure humane conditions.”
At Monday’s protest, some protesters shouted in Ms. Sherrill’s face to criticize her for not showing up earlier in the weekend, like other elected officials had.
Representative Rob Menendez of New Jersey had arrived at 8 p.m. on Sunday and stayed all night until he was allowed into the center on Monday morning. Mr. Menendez said that he had spoken to some of the detainees inside Delaney Hall, including a young woman who just wanted to go to her high school graduation, a pregnant woman who was trying to get medical care, and a man who showed him a carton of milk that had gone rancid.
“I heard just desperation from so many people in there,” Mr. Menendez said afterward.
Angela Martinez told Ms. Sherrill that her cousin, Bolivar Bueno, 65, has diabetes and that she hasn’t been able to speak to him to make sure he is getting medication. “We don’t know what’s going on,” she told the governor.
Afterward, Ms. Martinez said, “I want for her to help me out.”
Ms. Sherrill left after about an hour, around 11:30 a.m., as some demonstrators jeered at her. Her security had to clear the road of a couple people who tried to stop her S.U.V. from leaving.
A few hours later, a convoy of ICE vehicles approached another entrance on the south side of Delaney Hall. Protesters, who had rallied at the north entrance in the morning, ran over to sit down in front of the vehicles. Many said they feared that the detainees on hunger strike inside would be transferred to other facilities.
ICE agents — most of whom were wearing face masks — pushed and shoved the protesters out of the way, even dragging one young man by a kaffiyeh around his neck. As the protesters chanted “Trump Has To Go,” they linked arms and faced the ICE agents.
The standoff prevented anyone from leaving through the south entrance. Soon after, a military-style vehicle moved toward that entrance, with a man on top holding a firearm pointed at demonstrators.
Senator Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, who had been allowed inside Delaney Hall, came out during the confrontation and walked over to support the protesters. Soon afterward, the ICE agents and military vehicles backed away from the entrance and slightly retreated toward to the detention center, but the standoff continued.
“They provoked it, they brought that tank over,” Mr. Kim said. “It’s getting worse and worse here.”
The senator said he was working to “de-escalate” the standoff through negotiations with federal officials and would push for families to be allowed to visit detainees as early as Tuesday. “I’m going to keep at it,” he said.
Not long after, the standoff escalated with ICE agents using pepper balls and mace on the crowd.
It’s not the first time Delaney Hall has faced protests. In June 2025, four men escaped from the detention center after days of unrest over meager and sporadic meals and overcrowding that forced some detainees to sleep on the floor. Detainees had smashed windows, doors and security cameras.
And Mr. Baraka, the Newark mayor, was arrested in May 2025 during a clash with federal agents outside its gates last year.
Dakota Santiago contributed reporting.
There will be more ice cream in 2026. More bare feet and blowing dandelions. More iced tea and Frisbees and sandals. More mosquitoes and mowing? No, please, not that, for goodness’ sake, replace it with more hammock naps and fireflies caught after sunset.
Summer is kind of, sort of, just maybe actually going to be longer this year.
Unofficially the summer begins on Memorial Day, when we break out the white clothing, and ends on Labor Day, when we pack it away again. In between: ball games, sand in your shoes, Dad insisting he knows how to light the grill and Mom chasing you down to apply another coat of sunblock.
And Memorial Day falls on the earliest possible day this year: May 25. And Labor Day is on the latest possible day: Sept. 7. It’s a SuperSummer! A Summerganza! A Summerpalooza! (You can do better than us, reader, we know you can.)
Of course, none of this is official. People in the Northeast last week felt like it was already summer as the temperature surged into the 90s (then they had to contend with an unseasonably cool Memorial Day weekend).
The season officially starts this year, astronomically speaking, with the summer solstice on June 21, and ends with the fall equinox on Sept. 22.
That is hardly how we live it.
June 21? We’re already sunburned by then. September 22? We’re mired in geometry tests and the local corn maze. (I swear the exit was somewhere around here.)
But Memorial Day has become the checkpoint to the days of summer.
The act of Congress that established this remembrance of fallen armed service members says that the federal holiday falls on the final Monday of May. This year, because the month begins on a Friday, that’s the startlingly early date of May 25. And when that happens, Labor Day, the first Monday of September, lingers all the way to Sept. 7.
The Long, Hot Summer? Definitely. 500 Days of Summer? This year it’s 106, up from a paltry 99 in 2025. The Endless Summer? We can dream.
This has happened before, most recently in 2020, a year we had other things on our minds beside sand castles.
The frequency of the stretched out summer is complicated. Calendars, like a melting rainbow snow cone, are not neat and pretty. We will have to wait 11 years, until 2037, for the next MegaSummer. The cycle continues, with the next longer summer six years later, then in five years, then six years, then 11 again. Then repeat.
But even in the midst of summer’s joy, the cool nip of fall and the responsibilities it brings are never too far away. Children and their parents will never quite be able to forget the start of the school year, another unofficial moment that feels like season’s end.
With such a stretched-out summer, will kids get to avoid “creeping like snail / unwillingly to school” a little longer this year? And by extension, will parents have to turn over more pages of the calendar before the sweet return of the school bell?
The start of the school year varies around the country. The late Labor Day will feel like true break after weeks of school in some jurisdictions. Then there is New York City, where schools open a bit later, in part because of union contracts. This year, that will be the staggeringly late date of Sept. 10, six days later than 2025.
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