Trump tells Biden to 'use my policies' to 'close the border now' after president said they should 'get together and get it done' on migrant crisis

Former President Donald Trump on Monday urged President Joe Biden to follow his example and close the southern border with Mexico to end the migrant crisis facing the country.

The border has emerged as the most important issue for voters in November's presidential election and both sides have gone on the attack.

Trump used a televised address to accuse Biden of deliberately allowing in migrants and called on him to use all his presidential powers to tackle the problem. 

'This is not sustainable for our country. It's not sustainable for our cities. Our country is under siege,' said Trump at Mar-a-Lago. 'This is a violent thing that you've done, and many people are dying many, many people die, they die on the trip up. 

'They die going through the border, and they die in our country.'

Former President Donald Trump on Monday urged President Joe Biden to follow his example and close the southern border with Mexico to end the migrant crisis facing the country

The scene at the border in Arizona last Wednesday, as about 100 newly arrived migrants wait to be picked up by Border Patrol agents for processing

The numbers of people crossing illegally into the country rocketed when Biden took power.

In Trump's final year the number was 405,000. A year later it hit 1.7 million.

But the numbers also suggested that those figures hit an upward trajectory during Trump's final months in power.

Even so the former president said Biden should follow his policies.

'So I say respectfully to President Biden, you have the authorization right now. I did it,' he said.

'I didn't go to Congress and say, "Do I have the right to close?" I fought Congress on it. 

'Close the borders. You can do it right now. You have everything, use my policies. 

'My policies were great. Everybody said it. Use my policies.' 

Republicans have repeatedly accused the Biden administration of running an 'open borders' policy.

President Biden gets a tour of the border from CBP agents at the Rio Grande River in Brownsville, Texas, on Thursday last week. Trump visited Eagle Pass on the same day

A migrant camp on US soil in Arizona near Sasabe, where new arrivals wait to be picked up

Border Patrol agents arrive to collect the migrants and take them to a facility

But 'closing' the border may not be easy. Trump's border wall, for example, does not seal off the U.S. from Mexico.

Every day hundreds of migrants simply slip through holes or present themselves on U.S. soil on the far side of the wall and ask for asylum.

In a sign of the issue's importance, Trump and Biden both visited the border in Texas last Thursday.

Under pressure from Republicans, Biden last year urged Congress to deliver more funding for enforcement and promised to 'shut down the border' if given new authority to turn away migrants. 

But a bipartisan immigration bill stalled in the Senate after Trump came out in opposition. 

Trump made his comments after the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in his favor, saying that states don't have the ability to bar him from the ballot under a constitutional provision disqualifying anyone who engaged 'in insurrection.'

Supporters of Donald Trump clash with police at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021

He thanked the justices for working quickly in delivering a ruling that he said would be remembered for 200 years.

And he urged the court to deliver him immunity in the next election case that it will consider, arguing that any other decision would leave him open to prosecution for US military actions that killed senior terrorist leaders in the Middle East. 

'You cannot take somebody out of a race,' he said Monday afternoon at his Mar-a-Lago base in Florida.

'The voters can take a person out of the race very quickly. But a court shouldn't be doing that. The Supreme Court saw that.

'And I really do believe that will be a unifying factor.'