President Barack Obama on Friday signed a bill directing $600 million more to securing the U.S.-Mexico border, a modest election-year victory that underscores his failure so far to deliver an overhaul of immigration law from Congress.

Obama signed the bill Friday in a low-key Oval Office ceremony alongside Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. There were cameras present, but no reporters. The action came a day after the Senate convened in special session during its summer recess to pass the bill.

“Look, only Congress can pass a bill,” Napolitano said. “The president can advocate. He can get them to the table, as he has in the Roosevelt Room upstairs. He can implore. He can provide ideas. He can agree to a framework, as he already has. He can give a major address that spells out what’s needed in a bill, but only Congress can pass a bill.”

The new law will pay for the hiring of 1,000 more Border Patrol agents to be deployed at critical areas, as well as more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. It provides for new communications equipment and greater use of unmanned surveillance drones. The Justice Department gets more money to help catch drug dealers and human traffickers.

“Efforts to overhaul our broken immigration system have once again taken a back seat to appeasing anti-immigrant xenophobes, as Congress passed another dramatic escalation in border enforcement with very little evidence that past escalations have been effective,” said Margaret Moran, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

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