Houston, Texas - Vice President JD Vance was at the US-Mexico border Wednesday, the most senior figure in the new administration to visit the area since Donald Trump won back the White House pledging an immigration crackdown.

Vance, who has grown into his role as Trump's attack dog since being sworn into office in January, was accompanied by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who last week ordered 3,000 troops to the border.

The two men's visit came the day after a tub-thumping speech by the president to a joint session of Congress in which he repeatedly laid into what he called former president Joe Biden's "open border" policy.

Trump lauded his first six weeks in office, including what he called "the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history" that had reduced illegal border crossings to what he said was the lowest ever.

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"The media and our friends in the Democrat Party kept saying we needed new legislation, we must have legislation to secure the border. But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president," he said.

"Joe Biden didn't just open our borders. He flew illegal aliens over them to overwhelm our schools, hospitals and communities throughout the country.

"Entire towns like Aurora, Colorado and Springfield, Ohio, buckled under the weight of the migrant occupation and corruption like nobody’s ever seen before. Beautiful towns destroyed."

In the run-up to the presidential election, Trump repeatedly singled out these two places.

He claimed that Aurora had been taken over by migrant criminal gangs, after a viral video showed armed men bursting into an apartment.

He persisted in the claim even after the city's Republican mayor rebuffed it, saying the video showed an isolated incident that was related to an absentee landlord, not any widespread illegal presence.

In Springfield, Trump claimed on national television that Haitians were "eating the cats and dogs."

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The assertion was widely debunked, including by local officials who said there was zero evidence for it.

Vance and Hegseth were expected in the border city of Eagle Pass, a major crossing point between Mexico and the US.

Reporters traveling with the vice president said he would be taking a tour of a detention facility and holding a roundtable discussion.