Joe Biden welcomed Mariah Carey and her 12-year-old twins to the White House last week, giving the president a break from the headaches of the migrant crisis.
The 54-year-old singer posted the photos on her Instagram page on Wednesday.
“Last week I had the pleasure of meeting President Biden and Vice President Harris at the White House to kick off the holidays!” she wrote, sharing photos of her and the twins taking in the decorations.
“While we were there we were able to see all the festive decor and spread some cheer!”
The twins, son Moroccan and daughter Monroe, were born during her 2008-2016 marriage to Nick Cannon.
Carey poses with Biden, and with Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff.
Mariah Carey is seen with President Joe Biden in a photo posted to her Instagram account on Wednesday
The president speaks with Carey's daughter Monroe and son Moroccan. The 12-year-old's father is Carey's ex-husband, Nick Cannon
She is also seen chatting to Harris, 59, on the couch.
But as the celebratory gathering took place, Biden's team struggled to deal with the crisis at the southern border.
Records of daily 'encounters' with migrants by Border Patrol agents have been broken: 12,000 in one day.
Mayors of cities like New York and Chicago are looking to the federal government for help with the influx, while governors of border states are busing and flying migrants from their states north to Democratic-held areas.
On Wednesday, it emerged that hundreds of immigrants are crossing the US-Mexico border in Arizona, with only a handful of agents available to process them.
Most migrants cross the border and immediately surrender to agents so they can seek asylum and remain in the U.S. while they are processed.
Photos and videos from Lukeville, Arizona – filmed by Bill Melugin of Fox News and NewsNation Border Correspondent Ali Bradley – shows hundreds of newcomers carrying backpacks and carrying their meager belongings along the wall.
They walk quietly to a processing camp and wait in a single line for officers to assess them and give them paperwork to stay temporarily.
Carey and her twins pose near one of the White House Christmas trees
The singer and her children visited the White House last week
Carey also attended Congress and was photographed next to their awards
The singer visited Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff
Carey and Harris are deep in conversation, while her daughter Monroe and son Moroccan listen in
Immigrants line up for processing after crossing the US-Mexico border at Lukeville, Arizona
Photos and videos from Lukeville, Arizona, show hundreds of newcomers carrying backpacks and walking their meager belongings along the wall
Genuine asylum seekers can claim protection in the US, but the legality of crossing the border ad hoc outside a designated point of entry is murky.
Most migrants came from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, but others came from as far away as Afghanistan and India.
One of a group of Indian immigrants told reporters he had come to the US to escape “mortal danger,” but others said they were just coming to work.
Many will be immediately released or moved to cities like nearby Tucson, but southern states have also loaded tens of thousands of people onto buses and sent them to refuges in northern states like Chicago and New York.
There were 130,000 attempts to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in the first 17 days of November, and at least 167,000 so far in December.
Another hotspot, Eagle Pass in Texas, saw 14,000 migrants crossing on Tuesday near a town where only 30,000 Texans live.
Asylum seekers line the border wall near Lukeville waiting to surrender to border agents
The authorities are so thinly staffed that many will have to wait for hours, forcing them to 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 processing center in Lukeville after hundreds of migrants cross the border
Publicly available figures from the Department of Homeland Security show that border agents handled some 188,778 border crossings in October — a 14 percent drop from September. DHS declined to comment on the figures.
Eagle Pass has only 58 uniformed police officers and many of them also assist the Border Patrol in dealing with the crowds.
Border Patrol agents normally stationed at checkpoints along the route into the U.S. have also been redirected to assist in Eagle Pass.
Law enforcement officials fear drug cartels will take advantage of the situation to smuggle both people and drugs across the border amid the chaos.
“It's an absolute collapse of the border,” said Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland, a retired border agent and the top legal man in neighboring Terrell County.
'You increase the number of escapes, you increase the chance for cartels to successfully bring in drugs.
“It's a wide open border. Come as you please.”