Sponsors (11)
The bill strengthens tools to deter and prosecute adults who exploit minors and creates a standardized verification process, but does so by expanding DNA testing, stricter entry rules, and criminal penalties that risk separating legitimate caregivers, invading privacy, burdening agencies, and excluding common kinship caregiving arrangements.
Immigrants, children, and law-enforcement: Adults who use unrelated minors to evade immigration controls may face criminal penalties, creating a stronger deterrent against trafficking and alien smuggling.
DHS and border officials: Establishes a standardized verification process (documents, witness interviews, DNA) for confirming family relationships at ports of entry and during processing.
Federal prosecutors and courts: Provides a clear statutory tool to charge adults who exploit minors in cross-border schemes, improving prosecutorial clarity for trafficking-related charges.
Immigrants, children, and families: Adults accompanying children who lack the specified documents or witnesses can be denied entry and separated from the child, even when they are bona fide caregivers.
Immigrants and kinship caregivers: Limiting relationship verification to second‑degree consanguinity and using DNA can exclude extended-family and non‑relative caregivers common in many communities, increasing erroneous exclusions and cultural harm.
Adults seeking entry: Mandatory or consequential DNA testing forces genetic testing on people seeking admission, raising serious privacy and bodily‑autonomy concerns.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Requires documentary/witness proof or HHS-administered DNA to admit adults with minors and creates a felony for knowingly using non-relative minors to enter the U.S.
Official title: Amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to require a DNA test to determine the familial relationship between an alien and an accompanying minor.
Introduced January 9, 2025 by Marsha Blackburn · Last progress January 9, 2025
Bars admission of any adult traveling with a minor unless the adult proves a familial or legal guardianship relationship using documents and a witness or a DNA test; refusal or failure to prove relatedness makes the adult inadmissible and the child an unaccompanied minor. Creates a new federal felony for knowingly using a non-relative minor to enter the United States, punishable by fines and up to 10 years in prison.