H.R. 2 Delivers Essential Guardrails for American Borders

In 2023, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act. Passage of that bill came amid the most dangerous border crisis in the nation’s history and on the precise day that the Biden administration canceled Title 42, a health emergency provision invoked during COVID that allowed at least some illegal border-crossers to be sent back. By the end of that fiscal year, an alarming 3.2 million people had been encountered attempting to enter the United States illegally.

Since open borders was the policy of the Biden administration and his party, H.R. 2 never saw the light of day in the then-Democratic controlled Senate. After taking office in January 2025, President Trump effectively secured our borders in just a matter of weeks. Nevertheless, passing H.R. 2 now, while Republicans control both chambers of Congress and there is a president who is prepared to sign it into law, is no less important than it was at the apex of the Biden border fiasco.

The problem wasn’t that President Biden didn’t have the authority to do the same thing his successor did upon his return the White House. Rather, the problem was — and remains — that a president bent on subverting our immigration laws has far too much leeway to throw open our borders and allow just about anybody he or she wants to enter the country.

Our immigration laws were crafted with the expectation that whoever was in office would carry them out in good faith. The Biden administration — and to a lesser extent, previous Democratic and Republican presidents — demonstrated that we cannot rely on good faith. Guardrails need to be in place — and H.R. 2 provides them.

Much like the best time to fix a leaky roof is when the sun is shining, the current respite from mass illegal immigration is the perfect time to fix leaky border and immigration laws. H.R. 2 systematically closes the loopholes exploited by the anti-borders Biden administration and by the millions of illegal aliens who made their way into the country. Three of the biggest loopholes contributing to the immigration chaos of the early-2020s were exploitation of our asylum laws, abuse of humanitarian parole, and wholesale catch-and-release of illegal aliens.

Ending asylum abuse. H.R. 2 raises the bar for establishing “credible fear” of persecution in your homeland. As the Biden border crisis raged, illegal aliens poured across our borders, turned themselves in to border agents and asked for asylum based on well-rehearsed claims that any agent with more than five minutes on the job knew were bogus. And yet, the low credible fear bar all but ensured their quick release, a ticket to their preferred destination in the U.S. and a court date, years in the future.

H.R. 2 remedies this abuse by setting minimal standards for establishing credible fear. It also requires that those who want to seek asylum present themselves at a legal port of entry before they set foot on U.S. soil, rather than entering illegally between ports of entry.

Ending parole abuse. Immigration parole was established by Congress in 1952, authorizing the president to allow otherwise inadmissible aliens to enter the country temporarily for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public benefit.” The law also stipulated that parole must be considered on “a case-by-case” basis. Instead, the Biden administration turned parole into a shadow immigration system. In FY 2023, they granted 1,340,002 paroles, overshadowing the 1,173,640 people who got green cards that year.

Further making a mockery of the statutory limits on granting parole, the Biden administration created a special parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, allowing up to 360,000 of them to enter each year. All of the parolees were eligible for work authorization and a variety of government benefit programs. President Trump is attempting to revoke many of these paroles but the matter is tied up in the courts, demonstrating that abusing presidential authority is far easier than reining it in.

Ending catch-and-release. By statute, people who are apprehended entering the country illegally must either be detained pending a decision on their eligibility to remain here, or they must be sent back. The Biden administration asserted discretion to release millions of illegal aliens into the country while they awaited a court date (which they may or may not show up for). The likelihood of being released became an inducement for people to enter illegally, knowing that they would be able live here for years and that, even if the government attempted to remove them at some later date, finding them would be difficult.

H.R. 2 can once again be passed with a simple majority in the House. The Senate, where 60 votes are needed to bring the bill to the floor, is more difficult, but not impossible. The American public does not have an appetite for returning to the ruinous anti-borders policies of the previous administration. With the midterm elections looming, even some Senate Democrats may be reluctant to block popular, commonsense legislation that would prevent such a recurrence.

In the last election, the American people expressed a clear desire for secure borders and orderly immigration. The president has done his part. Now is the time for Congress to enact H.R. 2 and make sure that our borders remain secure and future immigration is legal and orderly.

Dale L. Wilcox is executive director and general counsel at the Federation for American Immigration Reform in Washington, D.C.