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AlterNet
May 31, 2017

Deported for Smoking Marijuana? Trump's Taking America Back to the Bad Old Days of the Drug War
By Phillip Smith


"Criminal aliens" conjures up images of rapists, murderers, gangbangers, and cartel cowboys, but many of those deported for criminal offenses were merely caught possessing drugs. The ICE data made available last week didn't specify what proportion of those deported for criminal offenses were because of drug charges, but a 2014 Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University report showed that nearly 250,000 — one-quarter of a million — people were deported for nonviolent drug offenses from 2008 to 2014. A nonviolent drug offense was the cause of deportation for more than one in ten (11 % of) people deported in 2013 for any reason — and nearly one in five (19 %) of those who were deported because of a criminal conviction. TRAC isn't alone in highlighting the high number of people being deported for drug offenses.


Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syracuse University
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