“Instead of playing politics with the issue, why don’t we just get together and get it done? Let’s remember who the heck we work for. We work for the American people. Not the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. We work for the American people.”

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For Biden, the visit was a dramatic shift on an issue he has spent years trying to publicly avoid, partly because the Trump-era policies he rescinded after winning office – such as halting construction of the border wall and no longer forcing asylum seekers to be sent back to Mexico to await immigration proceedings – compounded the crisis.

Now, thanks to Republicans killing a bill that could have tackled the problem – after Trump made it clear he wanted to campaign on it – Biden has sought to turn a political vulnerability into an election opportunity.

Trump, however, wasted no time hitting back, tapping into rising anger over crimes involving undocumented migrants that have gained national attention in recent weeks. He accused Biden of fuelling what he called a “migrant crime” wave.

The latest involved the killing of a Georgia college student, Laken Riley, for which an undocumented migrant from Venezuela was arrested.

Claiming that migrants crossing the border were coming from jails, “insane asylums” and were terrorists, Trump insisted the US was being “overrun”.

Trump’s solution centres on a plan to “carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history”. This would enlist law enforcement authorities to remove an estimated 10.5 million undocumented people, two-thirds of whom have lived in the US for more than a decade.

But the immigration crisis spans successive governments and is influenced by shifting migration patterns: previously, those seeking entry were mainly solo Mexican men wanting a job; now there are more families and people from crisis-torn countries such as Venezuela and Cuba, and even from as far as India and Africa.

In a bid to address the problem, a group of Senate Democrats and Republicans recently joined forces to create a bipartisan bill that, among other things, would have created a new authority to bar migrants from crossing the border if crossings rose above 5000 on average per day on a given week, or 8500 in a single day.

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It also included provisions to raise standards for asylum screening and deliver swift deportation for people who don’t qualify. This is important because, as Biden noted, about 2 million people are currently waiting for an immigration hearing, with many waiting up to five years for their day in court.

However, that bill was torpedoed by Republicans at Trump’s direction, and the issue remains unresolved.

“Joe Biden created a full-blown border crisis, but Donald Trump told Republicans in Congress to do nothing so he can use the issue as a political talking point,” said Nikki Haley, Trump’s rival for the Republican presidential nomination.

“Unacceptable. We can’t wait one more day to deal with this crisis.”

The crisis was consistently the biggest concern for voters who spoke to this masthead during the primary races in South Carolina, New Hampshire and Iowa – all of which Trump won.

A recent Harvard Harris poll also had immigration ahead of inflation as the most important issue facing Americans (35 per cent to 32 per cent). Meanwhile, figures from Ad Impact also show that candidates from both sides of politics spent about $US52 million ($80 million) on immigration-themed ads between January 1 and February 28.

“This is obviously the most polarising issue in the country,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. “Asylum is an integral part of who we are as a country, and it’s also very important for our leadership in the world. We need to save it.”