The school is 99% Latino, with a 93% poverty rate, but 97% of the graduates are going to college on academic scholarships totaling $4.7 million, Rangel said.

Obama's executive order addresses a major concern of the nation's burgeoning Hispanic community -- now the nation's No. 2 group under the 2010 census -- and mimics some of the provisions of a Democratic proposal called the DREAM Act, which has failed to win enough Republican support to gain congressional approval.

Both Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano cautioned Friday that the order is not a pathway to citizenship and urged Congress to pass the DREAM Act.

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors -- or DREAM -- Act would create a path to citizenship for immigrants who entered the United States illegally as children under the age of 16 and have lived in the United States for at least five years; obtained a high school or General Education Development diploma; demonstrated "good moral character"; and haven't committed crimes that "would make them inadmissible to the country," according to a White House fact sheet.