Groups are seeking access to DNA database to help ID missing migrants

BOULDER» Representatives of dozens of U.S. and Latin American advocacy groups pressed their case Friday for access to an Fbirun DNA database to help them locate and identify the remains of thousands of migrants thought to have disappeared over the last several decades while crossing the Mexican border into the United States.

U.S. officials pledged to continue talks on sharing forensic information and efforts to identify the missing — but said they are prevented from making the information public by a federal law that strictly restricts access to and sharing of information from the database.

The comments came during a hearing of the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The commission, part of the Organization of American States, conducted a weeklong series of hearings on various hemispheric issues at the university.

Advocacy groups say they have compiled more than 4,000 DNA profiles of people reported missing and presumed dead along the border with samples from relatives. The groups want to compare those samples with the Fbirun U.S. national database.

Rights commissioner Margarette May Macaulay offered to facilitate talks to find a solution the groups say they’ve been seeking for years.

“I have great faith that you do intend and have the will to work toward solving this egregious situation and give peace to these people,” Macaulay told U.S. officials attending the hearing.

Carlos Trujillo, the U.S. permanent representative to the OAS, and Paula Wolff, an attorney representing the FBI, pledged cooperation on an issue that predates the Donald Trump administration but cited restrictions on what the FBI can do under the 1994 DNA Act, which governs use of the national database.