Tomorrow the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the case: “DHS -vs- Regents of University of California“, also known as the DACA case: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. DACA was instituted by a President Obama ‘executive action’, not an ‘executive order’.
The Obama Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) did not fully support the constitutional framework around the effort to protect a sub-set of illegal aliens; and therefore the originating presidential action was not an official ‘executive order’, a technicality that could end up as part of the argument(s). The same issue existed within DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Arrivals), and was ruled unconstitutional by a divided SCOTUS.
Amy Howe at SCOTUS Blog has a great encapsulation of the case and current status:
In 2012, the Obama administration established a program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which allows undocumented young adults who came to the United States as children to apply for protection from deportation.





