The Bush administration is sending 500 agents to reinforce Arizona's border patrol. This seems superficially to be a good move, and overdue:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Homeland Security Department will assign more than 500 additional patrol agents to the porous Arizona border, saying they will help keep potential terrorists and illegal immigrants from entering the country, The Associated Press has learned.

The border buildup was to be announced Wednesday -- two days before civilian volunteers with the so-called Minuteman Project begin a monthlong Arizona patrol against immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico line.

About 155 agents will be immediately sent to Arizona, according to department officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the buildup was not yet announced. More than 370 additional agents -- all new trainees -- will be permanently assigned to the Arizona border throughout the year.

Until they are in place, another 200 agents will be temporarily stationed in Arizona during the high immigration season this spring and summer, officials said.

That last sentence is rich--"high immigration season."

Five hundred agents is about a fourth of the 2,000 new agents mandated by recent reform legislation, so in my mind it's but a token to placate the Minutemen. It may also be a counter to MS-13's threats against the Minutemen. In any case, it's a temporary measure. And these are not new agents, actually--they are being reassigned from other places along the border with Mexico. We're strengthening Arizona's border at the expense of Texas, New Mexico and California.

Stealing from Peter to pay Paul, if you will. And I'd lay odds that once the Minutemen go home, these agents will be shuttled back to whatever posts they came from.

CLARIFICATION: A Border Patrol agent emails to tell me that the force shifting that the NYT reports in the story above has been ordered in the past couple of "high immigration seasons," mostly as a response to bad press resulting from the deaths of illegals crossing the desert. So the Bush administration may not be playing games with the Border Patrol. But it's not actually doing anything at all about the problem, either.