The Biden administration is ending a Trump-era plan designed to crack down on fake claims of family relationships among illegal immigrants crossing America’s southern border.

The policy will end May 31, according to a leaked memo published by Just the News.

"The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) familial DNA contract with BODE Technologies will end on May 31, 2023 and all familial DNA testing will conclude on that date," the memo said.

In 2019, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan told the Senate Judiciary Committee that, based on initial results of one pilot program, 15 percent of alleged migrant families are committing fraud by claiming unrelated children as their own, according to The Hill.

At that time, he said illegal immigrants and smugglers believe "a child is a passport to migration in the United States."

As such, what he called "child recycling rings" exist, including one in which the same eight children were used to help bring in 36 adults. He also cited the case of a 51-year-old man who paid $80 to rent a six-month-old child so he could cross and remain.

A 2019 report in the Washington Examiner estimated that the fraud figure was closer to 30 percent.

In May 2019, the Associated Press reported that more than 1,000 cases of fraud related to false claims had been reported in the fiscal year that began in October 2018.

By 2021, when the Biden administration took over, DNA tests remained in use, but at a far lower level, according to the Washington Examiner.

In an excerpt from his book, “Overrun,” published on the website of the Center for Immigration Security, Todd Bensman said that the DNA testing worked, quoting Monica Maple, a retired official in charge of the San Antonio office of ICE Homeland Security Investigations.

“People who were told they were going to go through the machine were just breaking as they were waiting to give their swab. It was, ‘Oh yeah, that’s not my daughter; it’s my niece. It’s my cousin or some other story,” she said.

She said smugglers would broker a deal with a family to give a child to a stranger when they crossed the border.

“Parents who agreed to do this could have most or all of their huge smuggling fees waived to bring the whole family over,” Bensman wrote, citing Maple.

“It’s a new low for humanity that you would give your child away like this to a stranger,” she said. “I’d hate to see something happen to that child after the handoff occurs. They are with somebody who is not their parent. What if fake mom or fake dad needed to make medical decisions for the child? It’s just not right; the person who is supposed to be protecting them is not there.”

In his excerpt, Bensman said he asked Maple for her reaction that the aggressive DNA testing imposed by the Trump administration was being rolled back under Biden, with "reports that thousands of fake families were again crossing the border but this time with little U.S. government resistance."

“Horror. Horror. Horror. Horror,” she said, according to Bensman.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.