The border still an enduring player on the political chessboard, no matter who is in power

After seeing firsthand the migrant crisis at the Texas-Mexico border in 2019, prominent U.S. senators and other federal officials demanded bipartisan legislation to give the president the tools he needed to do more than simply put yet another Band-Aid on a decades-long problem.

The visit by the elected officials, including Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina as well as Vice President Mike Pence, came as unrest along the Rio Grande was dominating headlines, and the GOP was getting most of the criticism. The officials' mission, at least in part, was to shift the narrative so that the blame could be spread around. And like any good politicians would, they cast the other party as stubborn, intractable and irresponsible for not putting the good of the country ahead of all else.

That visit to South Texas came in July 2019.

The 4½-year-old anecdote has relevance today because the twin issues of immigration and border security still dominate the headlines. Just weeks before that trip to the border, then-President Donald Trump signed a $4.6 billion measure that would provide humanitarian aid for the area. But the message in McAllen, in part, was that Democrats were standing in the way of more comprehensive efforts to overhaul the asylum system.

When Pence, Cornyn, Graham and a few other Republican officials were in South Texas, Trump's "build the wall" mantra was playing quite well with the GOP base. But Democrats and, more important, many moderate swing voters were not on board with images and footage of migrant families being separated at the border and kids being warehoused without their parents behind chain-link fences inside detention facilities.

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There was more than a grain of truth to the lament by Pence and company that the Democrats in Washington were stiff-arming comprehensive immigration legislation backed by Republicans and the Trump administration.

It was, after all, a safe bet that heart-wrenching images from the border contributed to Republicans suffering a net loss of 41 seats in the U.S. House, along with control of that chamber, in the 2018 midterms. In Texas, Democrats had their best election night since Gov. Greg Abbott was just another young lawyer in Houston as they flipped 12 GOP seats in the state House and Rep. Beto O'Rourke came within a whisker of upsetting Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

So why would the Democrats want to help Trump win back the moderates with the next presidential election just then peeking above the horizon?

Then, as now, the border is a mess. A different kind of a mess, for sure, but a mess no less. Call it ironic, or call it politics as usual, but many of the Republicans who in 2019 said Trump needed Congress' help to fully address the border mess are now saying President Joe Biden has all the tools he needs to stem the endless flow of unlawful migration but won't fully use them.

Call it ironic, or call it or politics as usual, but even though Trump wanted Congress to send him a comprehensive border plan as his own reelection effort was gearing up, he has been working against a U.S. Senate border bill that Biden could campaign on ahead of his expected rematch against the former president later this year.

More: In Eagle Pass, Greg Abbott and GOP governors strike familiar themes about border unrest

Trump called the measure a "highly sophisticated trap for Republicans to assume the blame" and urged GOP members in Congress to tank it.

Call it ironic, or call it politics as usual, but Trump and the Republicans who voted in line with his wishes might have given Biden a gift that any good politician can use: Instead of having to continue to play defense on border security and immigration, as he's been doing for three years, Biden can now blame Trump and congressional Republicans, fairly or unfairly, for putting their own partisan interests ahead of the good of the country.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Both sides use border and immigration to advance their own interests