WASHINGTON, DC -- President Barack Obama on Friday signed into law a $600 million bill in a low-key Oval Office ceremony to beef up security on the U.S. border with Mexico, as Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano watched on Friday, August 13, 2010.

A modest election-year victory that underscores the president’s failure to deliver an overhaul of immigration law.

The bill fell short by the standards Obama has set for dealing with the immigration problem.

Napolitano said later: "This bill is clearly another step forward on border security, on top of the significant progress that the administration has already made. It is one of the many tools in the toolbox we have constructed along the border."
The new $600 million will fund some 1,500 new border patrol agents, customs inspectors and other law enforcement officials along the border, as well as two more unmanned aerial "drones" to monitor border activities.

The president’s aides pressed lawmakers to set aside election-year politics and work toward broader immigration reform. They insisted the president remained committed to revamping what he has called a broken immigration system, and challenged Democrats and Republicans to show leadership.

With illegal immigration seen as a key issue in the November congressional elections, the Obama administration touted the border enforcement plan as laying the groundwork for a revived effort to overhaul the U.S. immigration system.

Congress passed the measure this week and sent it to Obama, who sought the extra funding amid complaints from southwestern U.S. states that the government was failing to seal the border from illegal immigrants and drug traffickers.

Lawmakers have been reluctant to push ahead on the hot-button issue of immigration reform, and no serious progress is likely until after the mid-term elections.

"They will ...