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In a set of yearly statistics published by the department, deportations are lumped together in broad categories. One category, "dangerous drugs," for example, could hypothetically include both those deported for a felony drug trafficking charge and those deported for a misdemeanor marijuana possession charge.
In September, ABC/Univision raised questions about the criminal deportation stats with David Burnham, the co-director of Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), an organization that gathers government data.
"The Obama administration claims that more of the people they're deporting have been convicted of a criminal violation, although our data says that may not be true," he said. "What they mean by a criminal violation is someone arrested bicycling on the sidewalk; really they've defined everything as criminal. And they're using that to get rid of people."
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