Biopolitics and generic surveillance of asylum seekers at the southern border of United States

The objective of the article is to argue that the taking of DNA samples from migrants and asylum seekers is a biopolitical device of genetic surveillance that uses the body of migrants as a mechanism of border control. The article is approached theoretically from the concept of biopolitics proposed by Foucault (1998), the contributions of Agamben (1998) regarding the category State of exception and the role of what he calls the nuda vida in the subject of biopolitics, which he conceptualizes as homo sacer and applies to the migrant person. The methodological strategy is quantitative, based on the results of the Survey of Foreign Migrants and Asylum Seekers (ENMIEXSA). The results show that the biometric data and the information obtained from the DNA samples of migrants and asylum seekers provide U.S. government agencies with a unique power for immigration control.