The Obama administration deported the fewest number of immigrants in the past 12 months since 2006, according to government figures obtained by The Associated Press.

The figures also show that deportations of criminal immigrants have dropped to the lowest numbers since President Barack Obama took office in 2009, despite his pledge to focus on finding and deporting criminals living in the country illegally.

Hillary Clinton distanced herself from President Barack Obama's immigration policies in an interview with the Spanish-language network Telemundo, accusing the White House of breaking up families through an aggressive deportation policy.

Her comments echoed long-running complaints of the immigration advocacy community that Mr. Obama's immigration policy has been overly harsh. But they stand in contrast to comments Mrs. Clinton made in June 2014 defending the Obama policy, where she said the president was doing all he could within the law to keep families together. They also appeared to ignore changes in deportation policy that Mr. Obama ordered in late 2014.

Speaking to Telemundo, the Democratic presidential candidate criticized Mr. Obama's policy but said his approach was part of a strategy aimed at winning over Republicans to support immigration legislation legalizing people in the U.S. illegally.

"The deportation laws were interpreted and enforced, you know, very aggressively during the last six and a half years, which I think his administration did in part to try to get Republicans to support comprehensive immigration reform," she said. "That strategy is no longer workable. So therefore I think we have to go back to being a much less harsh and aggressive enforcer."