President Joe Biden last week welcomed Mariah Carey and her 12-year-old twins to the White House, and giving the president a break from the headache of the migrant crisis.
The 54-year-old singer posted the photos on her Instagram page on Wednesday – as it emerged she has split with her boyfriend of seven years Bryan Tanaka.
‘Last week I had the pleasure of meeting President Biden & Vice President Harris at the White House to ring in the holiday season!’ she wrote, sharing photos of her and the twins taking in the decorations.
‘While there, we got to see all the festive decor and spread some cheer!’
The twins, son Moroccan and daughter Monroe, were born during her 2008-16 marriage to Nick Cannon.
Carey is seen posing with Biden, and with Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff.
The visit comes as thousands of migrants pour across the southern border, leaving cities struggling with the influx. Leaders’ calls for help from Washington to deal with the crisis have fallen on deaf ears.
Mariah Carey is seen with President Joe Biden in a photo posted to her Instagram account on Wednesday
The president is seen speaking with Carey’s daughter Monroe and son Moroccan. The 12-year-olds’ father is Carey’s ex husband, Nick Cannon
During the visit, Carey is also seen chatting on the sofa with Harris, 59.
But while the festive gathering was taking place, Biden’s team was struggling to deal with the crisis on the southern border.
Records of daily migrant ‘encounters’ by Border Patrol agents have been broken, with 12,000 in one day.
Mayors of cities such as New York and Chicago are looking to the federal government for help with the influx, as the governors of border states bus and fly migrants away from their lands and up north to the Democrat-run areas.
On Wednesday it emerged that hundreds of immigrants are walking across US-Mexico border in Arizona, with only a handful of officers available to process them.
Most of the migrants cross the border and immediately surrender to officers so they can claim asylum, and are allowed to stay in the US while they are processed.
Photos and videos from Lukeville, Arizona – filmed by Fox News’s Bill Melugin and NewsNation Border Correspondent Ali Bradley – show hundreds of new arrivals wearing backpacks with their meager possessions walking along the wall.
They calmly stroll to a processing camp and wait in single file for agents to assess them and give them paperwork to stay temporarily.
Carey and her twins strike a pose by one of the White House Christmas trees
The singer and her children visited the White House last week
Carey also went to Congress and was photographed next to the capitol’s decorations
The singer paid a visit to Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff
Carey and Harris are seen deep in conversation, as her daughter Monroe and son Moroccan listen
Immigrants line up to be processed after crossing the US-Mexico border at Lukeville, Arizona
Photos and videos from Lukeville, Arizona, show hundreds of new arrivals wearing backpacks with their meager possessions walking along the wall
Genuine asylum-seekers are able to claim protection in the US, but the legality of crossing the border ad-hoc outside a designated point of entry is murky.
Most of the migrants were from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, but others were from as far as Afghanistan and India.
One of a group of Indian immigrants told reporters he entered the US to escape ‘life danger’, but others said they were just coming for work.
Many will be released immediately or moved to towns like nearby Tucson, but southern states have also loaded tens of thousands on to buses and sent them to sanctuary cities in northern states like Chicago and New York.
There were 130,000 attempts to cross the US-Mexico border in the first 17 days of November and there have been at least 167,000 so far in December.
Another hotspot, Eagle Pass in Texas, had 14,000 migrants rush the crossing on Tuesday near a town that is home to just 30,000 Texans.
Asylum-seekers stand along the border wall near Lukeville waiting to surrender to border agents
Authorities are stretched so thin that many will be waiting for hours so they sit on the ground
Border Patrol agents herd hundreds of migrants into lines at a processing center
A long line snakes across the gravel at the Lukeville processing center after hundreds of migrants crossed the border
Publicly available Department of Homeland Security figures show border agents dealt with some 188,778 crossings in October – a 14 percent decrease from September. DHS declined to comment on the figures.
Eagle Pass only has 58 uniformed police officers and many of them are also helping Border Patrol handle the masses.
Border Patrol agents normally posted at roadside checkpoints leading into the US have also been redirected to help in Eagle Pass.
Law enforcement officials fear drug cartels will take advantage of the situation to smuggle both people and drugs across the border in the chaos.
‘It’s an absolute collapse of the border,’ said Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland who is a retired border agent, the top law man in neighboring Terrell County.
‘You increase the amount of gotaways, you increase the opportunity for cartels to bring drugs in successfully.
‘It’s a wide open border. Come as you please.’