Probably right. It's not like you can count on democrat votes to secure the border; when they say it's a problem it's them doing performance art.

It's not just performance art. The Democrats don't agree with the most draconian measures for securing the border, but they do (or did) support strengthening border controls in several ways that the GOP agrees with. Generally, they also support programs that support immigrants that are already here (notably the DREAMERs), and so generally favor a comprehensive approach to immigration reform that includes both border security measures and normalization of the legal status of the DREAMERs. This was the GOP's first (and probably last) chance to get a bill that was pretty much all security, no DREAMER normalization. And they passed.

We've covered that law, and it was trash. Passing no bill at all is better than passing bad bills.

No it wasn't, and no it isn't. HR 2 is the measure that was "performance art" - it's a messaging bill, one that is only 100% what the base of one party wants. Those kinds of bills only get through the chamber you control because it cannot pass. If you actually have to negotiate with the center-leaning portion of your own party (forget the other party), you can't get that bill passed. They're willing to vote for it in a messaging bill because they don't ever have to face the impacts if it passes - it's so one-sided it will never get through the Senate. But because of that, the drafters haven't done any of the work in negotiating with GOP members who are from districts where the most draconian version of a border security bill will cause them problems.

The compromise bill wasn't trash. It simply was the most border-security-focused bill that could pass the Senate. Like, in a generation. The immigration hawks in the GOP like to pretend to you guys in the base that something like HR 2 can one day pass if only you negotiate hard enough, but that's simply false. So you keep credulously believing that one day you'll get that bill that's 100% of what you want, and instead pass up anything short of that - so instead, the country keeps living under immigration laws that don't work for modern immigration problems.