Along with his more sensationalized executive order granting some illegal immigrants a chance to stay in the U.S. without fear of deportation, President Barack Obama quietly ended a controversial program on Thursday that had deported 283,000 of them after they were arrested for crimes other than border-crossing.

The Secure Communities program has been in place in limited form since 2006, and expanded nationwide in 2008. It allowed local law enforcement to hold arrestees and convicts 48 hours after they were officially bailed or released, if they were in the county illegally, so federal agents could pick them up and start immigration proceedings.

Instead, the administration has replaced it with a much narrower program that limits the list of qualifying offenses and only lets the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency intervene after an illegal immigrant is convicted.

Many make bail and never return to court to face their charges, however.

SCROLL DOWN TO READ THE HOMELAND SECURITY ORDERS

Sad inheritance: Detective Michael David Davis Jr. was killed by a Southern California illegal immigrant who had been deported twice already

RAISING THE BAR: Only illegal immigrants convicted of felonies and other serious crimes will be handed over to immigration authorities, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced Thursday

'The president’s decision to suspend a program helping law enforcement identify and deport dangerous criminals from our country is indefensible,' Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn said Friday, 'and his actions will only tie the hands of law enforcement officials trying to keep criminals off our streets and our communities safe.'

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Obama, he said, 'has neither the will nor the leadership ability to do what presidents before him have done: work with Congress to achieve meaningful reforms. Instead, he’s chosen to ignore the rule of law and launch another massive executive power grab that has grave security consequences for all Americans.'

Obama's decision could help the federal government prioritize its strained resources to focus on deporting 'felons, not families,' as Obama promised in a prime-time speech Thursday night.

'We're going to keep focusing enforcement resources on actual threats to our security,' he said.

But if his aim is to focus on the worst of the worst, his administration has a tough road ahead.

Last year ICE released more than 36,000 convicted criminal aliens while they were awaiting deportation, according to a May report from the Center for Immigration Studies.

Those illegal immigrants included more than 16,070 convicted of driving while drunk or under the influence of drugs, 5,000 convicted of larceny, 303 kidnappers, 1,160 car thieves, 193 killers and 426 convicted of sexual assault.

One of the murderers was convicted of willfully killing a law enforcement officer.

ICE said in May that most of the 36,000 were released under restrictions such as GPS monitoring, telephone monitoring or other supervision; some merely had to pay a bond.

In about 8 per cent of cases, courts ordered ICE to release them because their home countries refused to take them back.

'What possible justification could there be for freeing a murderer who is being deported? Dozens of times?' Center for Immigration Studies policy studies director asked CBS News at the time.

'The vast majority of these releases were discretionary, or even contrary to the requirements of various provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act,' the group said in a statement.

The reinvented Secure Communities Program, now called the 'Priority Enforcement Program' – the Homeland Security Department calls it 'PEP' – will 'only seek the transfer of an alien in the custody of state or local law enforcement through the new program when the alien has been convicted of' a narrow list of crimes, according to a memo from DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson to ICE Acting Director Thomas Winkowski.

Those crimes include all felonies other than immigration related crimes, street gang violence, a third or subsequent non-traffic-related misdemeanor, domestic violence, sexual abuse and burglary.

They do not include the crime of crossing America's borders illegally.

VAYA CON DIOS: President Barack Obama said goodbye to the Secure Communities program when he announced an immigration policy overhaul Thursday night

'INDEFENSIBLE': Texas Sen. John Cornyn said the new order will make it harder for police and sheriffs to do their jobs

ICE can also take custody of criminal convicts whom they believe are 'engaged in or suspected of terrorism or espionage, or who otherwise pose a danger to national security.

But 'unless the alien poses a demonstrable risk to national security,' Johnson wrote, 'enforcement actions through the new program will only be taken against aliens who are convicted of specifically enumerated crimes.'

Many cities and counties in the U.S. long ago stopped cooperating with ICE – the Pew Charitable Trusts counted more than 300 and the entire states of California, Colorado and Connecticut – had stopped or curtailed their cooperation. releasing bailed arrestees and convicts on time despite so-called immigration 'detainers' from the agency.

Those requests will no longer exist, replaced with a more polite request for a heads-up with an illegal immigrant's jail or prison sentence nears its end.

'I am directing ICE,' Johnson wrote, 'to replace requests for detention (i.e., requests that an agency hold an individual beyond the point at which they would otherwise be released) with requests for notification (i.e. , requests that state or local law enforcement notify ICE of a pending release during the time that person is otherwise in custody under state or local authority).'

Secure Communities operated through a digital fingerprinting database that local authorities shared with the federal government, whose analysts dissected it for signs of illegal immigrants.

Hispanic activists, however, saw increases in the number of low-level offenders swept up by the dragnet and deported.