But even after introducing the most sweeping relief to undocumented immigrants in decades, Obama was briefly derailed by a protester arguing that the president had not gone far enough.

“I’ve heard you and what I’m saying to you is, we’re still going to have to pass a bill,” Obama said to a young man whose shouts were drowned out by supportive chants from the audience surrounding him at Del Sol High School. “This is just a first step.”

Yet he still painted his actions as dramatic. “Our immigration system has been broken for a very long time, and everybody knows it,” he said. “For years we haven’t done much about it. Well, today, we’re doing something about it.”

(WATCH: Heckler interrupts Obama’s Las Vegas immigration speech)

The president’s plan is centered around three main priorities — boosting border security, focusing deportation resources on felons and other threatening people rather than families and giving millions of people the ability to apply for a three-year reprieve from deportation along with the authorization to work legally in the United States.

But there is still more to do, Obama conceded.

“I came back to Las Vegas to tell you … I will not give up,” he said, turning back to the need for broader immigration reform legislation. “When members of Congress question my authority, I have a simple answer: Pass a bill. Pass a bill,” he continued, echoed by supportive chants from the crowd.

Obama also reflected on his January 2013 visit to Del Sol, when he called on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation. “What was remarkable was the consensus that started to develop” among Democrats and Republicans, business leaders, religious groups and pro-reform advocates, he said. “You ended up with a big majority of Republicans and Democrats and independents all coming together in the Senate” to pass a bill in June 2013.

(Also on POLITICO: How Obama got here)

But House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) declined to follow through, he charged.

“It has now been 512 days — a year and a half — in which the only thing standing in the way of that bipartisan bill and my desk … is a simple yes or no vote in the House of Representatives,” he said. “I cajoled and I called and I met. I told John Boehner, ‘I’ll wash your car, I’ll walk your dog.’”

Boehner showed no signs Friday of wanting to move forward on that bill. Instead, he criticized Obama for his unilateral decision on immigration.

He accused Obama of “damaging the presidency itself,” and said he was consulting with House members on how to respond.

Obama stressed in Las Vegas that he is still hoping for congressional action, whether it’s through the House taking up the Senate bill before the end of the year or via new legislation in the next Congress. “We’ll all have a nice signing ceremony,” he said, suggesting that Boehner and future Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) might attend alongside Democrats.

On Friday, though, Obama could only draw congressional Democrats to his rally, including current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Sen. Bob Menendez (N.J.), and Reps. Xavier Becerra (Calif.), Luis Gutierrez (Ill.), Steven Horsford (Nev.), Ben Ray Lujan (N.M.) and Dina Titus (Nev.). They flew to Nevada aboard Air Force One, along with Arturo Rodriguez of United Farm Workers, Marc Morial of the National Urban League and Gabriel Salguero of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition.