From The Oakland (Calif.) Tribune — Originally published Saturday, Dec. 27

Beginning Jan. 9, and based on new rules coming from the Justice Department, immigration detainees and others arrested for federal crimes will be forced to provide DNA samples. Clearly, the Justice Department forgot about the concept of innocent until proven guilty.

Currently, the government collects DNA samples only from those convicted of federal crimes, where more than 6.2 million analyses have been added to a national database. But under the new rules, even the accused are subjected to this violation of privacy rights.

The lawmaker behind this legislation is Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona.

Kyl is certain this law will help prevent violent crimes from deportees who return illegally or those who commit heinous acts while in this country. That … sounds more like profiling than crime prevention.

What Kyl and the law assume is a good number of illegal immigrants come to the United States to commit more crimes. There is no statistic to back this claim and most illegal immigrants, while we admit they committed a crime crossing the border, are keeping a low profile so they prevent deportation. …

Taking this agency’s logic, if the Justice Department really wants to solve crimes … then why not mandate that everyone arrested within the U.S. borders subject themselves to DNA tests? To take it further, why not every person in this country? That could solve more crimes, right? We hope it doesn’t come to this. …