H.R. 2 Vote: House Tally, Aftermath, and Where It Landed

The House passed H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act of 2023, on May 11, 2023 by a vote of 219 to 213. Every yes vote came from a Republican, every Democrat present voted no, and two Republicans crossed the aisle to oppose the bill. The H.R. 2 vote cleared the House but the bill went no further: the Senate never brought it to the floor, and it expired when the 118th Congress adjourned in January 2025. Several of its ideas resurfaced in laws passed later.¹

The Tally

Final count: 219 in favor, 213 against. One Republican and two Democrats did not vote. The two Republican no votes came from Representative John Duarte of California and Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky.¹

Duarte represented an agricultural district in California’s Central Valley. He said he opposed the bill to “support working families and agriculture,” argued it would hurt families in his district and food producers more broadly, called it “dead on arrival” in the Senate, and urged bipartisan compromise.²

Massie, a libertarian-leaning Republican, opposed the bill specifically because of its mandatory E-Verify provision, which he viewed as an unacceptable expansion of government surveillance over employers and workers.²

Why the Vote Happened That Day

The House voted on H.R. 2 the same day the COVID-era Title 42 expulsion authority expired. Title 42 had allowed border officials to rapidly expel migrants without standard asylum screening. Its end meant a return to regular immigration processing during a period of historically high border encounters, and the timing gave the vote political weight beyond the numbers.

What Was Actually in the Bill

To make sense of who voted how, it helps to know what H.R. 2 would have done. The bill covered five broad areas.³

Border Wall

DHS would have been required to resume all barrier construction planned before January 20, 2021 and build at least 900 miles of wall along the southwest border, up from the prior 700-mile reinforced fencing requirement. The bill also converted DHS’s existing discretionary authority to waive environmental and land-management laws into a mandate.

Asylum

The bill limited asylum eligibility to people who arrived at an official port of entry, and it prohibited DHS from processing anyone who entered between ports. Under prior law, anyone physically present in the U.S. or arriving at a border could request asylum regardless of how they entered. This was one of the most contested provisions.

Remain in Mexico

DHS would have been required by statute to reinstate a policy modeled on the Migrant Protection Protocols. The Biden administration had ended the original MPP program, and this provision would have taken the choice out of executive hands.

Mandatory E-Verify

Every employer in the country would have been required to use an electronic employment eligibility verification system for all new hires, on a phased timeline based on company size. E-Verify is currently voluntary for most private employers under federal law, though some states require it. This was the provision Massie cited in his no vote.

Parole Limits

The bill prohibited DHS from granting parole based on criteria describing an entire class of potential recipients, restricted parole for people already inside the U.S., narrowed the permissible purposes for parole, and capped how long any individual parole period could last. Parole is the tool DHS uses to temporarily admit people for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit on a case-by-case basis; several administrations have used it to admit large groups under categorical programs.

What Happened After the House Vote

The Senate received H.R. 2 but never advanced it to a floor vote. Most legislation in the Senate needs 60 votes to invoke cloture and overcome a filibuster, which effectively requires bipartisan support.⁴ H.R. 2 had zero Democratic support in the House, and Republicans held only a slim Senate minority in the 118th Congress. There was no realistic path to 60.

When the 118th Congress ended in January 2025, the bill expired. Any bill that does not complete the full legislative process by the end of a two-year Congress dies and must be reintroduced.³

Where H.R. 2’s Ideas Ended Up

The bill itself never became law, but two later pieces of legislation carried parts of its agenda forward.

Laken Riley Act

Signed on January 29, 2025 as Public Law 119-1, the Laken Riley Act requires DHS to detain individuals who are unlawfully present and have been charged with or arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting. It also authorizes state governments to sue the federal government over immigration enforcement decisions that harm the state or its residents, including failures related to parole.⁵

The 2025 Reconciliation Package

The bigger vehicle was H.R. 1 of the 119th Congress, the budget reconciliation bill sometimes called the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” It passed the House 215 to 214 on May 22, 2025, cleared the Senate 51 to 50 on July 1, 2025, and was signed on July 4, 2025 as Public Law 119-21.⁶

Reconciliation bills bypass the 60-vote filibuster threshold and pass with a simple majority, which is why Republican leadership used this route for immigration provisions that had stalled the prior Congress. The law includes $46.6 billion for border wall construction, $5 billion for CBP facilities and checkpoints, and $45 billion for detention capacity covering both families and single adults.⁷

On asylum, the reconciliation law took a different approach than H.R. 2’s outright bar on claims between ports of entry. It imposes fees instead: at least $100 to file an asylum application with no waiver available, another $100 each year the application remains pending, at least $550 for an initial work permit, and a separate $1,000 fee on parolees.⁷

The reconciliation package did not include H.R. 2’s mandatory E-Verify provision or its Remain in Mexico mandate. Both would have required changes to authorization law rather than spending, which is harder to fit within reconciliation’s procedural constraints.

Proposed Versus Enacted

Border wall: H.R. 2 required at least 900 miles of new construction with mandatory legal waivers. The reconciliation law provides $46.6 billion for barriers without setting a mileage target.
Asylum: H.R. 2 would have barred claims between ports of entry. The reconciliation law leaves that door open but imposes filing fees and work permit fees.
Remain in Mexico: H.R. 2 mandated reinstatement by statute. No equivalent became law.
E-Verify: H.R. 2 required all employers to use the system on a phased timeline. No federal E-Verify mandate is in current law.
Parole: H.R. 2 prohibited categorical parole programs. The reconciliation law imposes a $1,000 parolee fee, and the Laken Riley Act allows states to sue the federal government over parole-related enforcement failures.⁵
Detention: The reconciliation law funds $45 billion for detention capacity and appropriates money for expedited removal of certain criminal aliens.⁷

The most far-reaching parts of H.R. 2, the asylum eligibility bar, the statutory Remain in Mexico mandate, and universal E-Verify, did not survive the legislative process. What did make it through was mostly on the spending side: heavy funding for border infrastructure and detention, plus a fee structure meant to discourage asylum and parole claims.

1
Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives. Office of the Clerk Vote Details
2
The Hill. GOP Lawmaker Explains Vote Against Republican Border Bill
3
Congress.gov. H.R. 2 – 118th Congress (2023-2024) Secure the Border Act of 2023
4
United States Senate. About Filibusters and Cloture
5
Congress.gov. S.5 – Laken Riley Act 119th Congress (2025-2026)
6
Congress.gov. Actions – H.R. 1 – 119th Congress (2025-2026)
7
Congress.gov. Text – H.R. 1 – 119th Congress (2025-2026)