Giving Compass' Take:

• DNA testing companies like 23andMe and MyHeritage have stepped up to offer separated immigrant families free test kits to help with reunification. Although these companies guaranteed confidentiality, Fast Company reports that immigration group have turned down the offers with skepticism.  

• These DNA tests raise privacy concerns, and there are some doubts as to their efficacy. Still, this could be a jumping-off point to see how technology could help migrants and refugees who need immediate assistance.

• Here's how philanthropists can help with the family separation crisis at our borders.

For the more than 2,000 immigrant kids who were taken from their parents when they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border as a result of the Trump administration’s new zero-tolerance immigration policy, it isn’t clear how difficult it will be to reunite them with their families now that the Trump administration has said that it wants to end its policy family separation.

Though many of the kids have ended up in shelters several states away, the government says that it “knows the location of all the children in its custody” and it has a plan for reunification–albeit with no clear timeline or further details. Some nonprofits and attorneys working on cases say that they’ve struggled to locate children for their clients as they navigate through a labyrinthine, multi-agency bureaucracy. In some cases, children may have been listed under the wrong name or age in their intake papers. Toddlers may not remember their parents’ full names; in one case, a 6-year-old was able to reach a family member only because she’d memorized a phone number.

In response, DNA testing companies 23andMe and MyHeritage both announced on June 21 that they would provide free testing kits to parents and children to help connect them. “It’s inspiring to see the massive outreach around helping these families,” 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki tweeted on June 21. Both customers and U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier had petitioned 23andMe to make the offer.

MyHeritage, which has also donated tests to help adoptees find their birth families, said it would provide 5,000 kits, and that it was contacting relevant government agencies and nonprofits. 23andMe later said that it would work only with nonprofit legal aid organizations. A spokesperson for MyHeritage told Fast Company that the genomics company planned to handle all of the data itself rather than sharing it with third parties, and that the data would be protected as it is for other customers. If someone wants to have their DNA records destroyed, they could request that. But the offers still raised ethical questions–and questions about how useful the technology could be in this situation. Both RAICES Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project, leading civil rights groups that work with immigrant families, decided to decline the offer.

Read the full article about DNA tests to help reunite separated immigrant families by Adele Peters at Fast Company.