Via CNS News:

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson issued a series of memorandums on the same day the President Barack Obama announced he would take executive action to protect millions of illegal aliens from being deported, including ending Secure Communities, the partnership between federal, state and local law enforcement to facilitate the enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws.

“The Secure Communities program, as we know it, will be discontinued,” the first line of Johnson’s Nov. 20 memo reads.

The memo is directed to DHS’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties; Thomas Winkowski, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); and Philip McNamara, assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs.

“The goal of Secure Communities was to more effectively indentify and faciliatate the removal of criminal aliens in the custody of state a local law enforcement agencies,” the memo stated.

“But the reality is the program has attracted a great deal of criticism, is widely misunderstood, and is embroiled in litigation; its very name has become a symbol for general hostility toward the enforcement of our immigration laws,” it added.