I posted the entire summary of HB2 upthread and bolded a number of really excellent provisions for border security. As near as I can tell, no democrats voted for it.

Of course. It has nothing in it that they support, and is far more restrictive than they would ever agree to. HB 2 was a messaging bill - a bill that is never anticipated to garner broad enough votes to pass. They're designed to contain lots of things that the other party would never agree to include in a bill, so that the proposing party can use their votes against the messaging bill to argue that the other party won't support the general idea of the bill. That's the point of a messaging bill - if you've drafted the bill reasonably enough that you get votes from the opposing party, you've done it wrong.

Were I him that's how I would play it: Issue an EO, let the democrats sue me to keep the border controls soft, then blame them when the judge inevitably shoots it down.

But what does that get you? The actual situation on the border doesn't change. You still don't have any increased border security. You still don't have the ability to do anything about the border. You still have the hundreds of thousands of asylees in the country for years, waiting for their hearings. And in the conservative theory of the border, that will encourage even more people to come to the border.

Don't you want the conditions of the border to improve? How does blaming Democrats when Trump is unable to break the law help that?