WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he will sign an order allowing the Department of Homeland Security to pay airport security workers who have gone without a full paycheck since the shutdown began in mid-February.
The order for Transportation Security Administration workers does not appear to include pay for other federal employees working for DHS, including those at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Secret Service.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Customs and Border Protection have largely been insulated from the DHS shutdown since Republicans approved tens of billions in additional funding for those two agencies in last year’s “big, beautiful” law.
“It is not an easy thing to do, but I am going to do it! I want to thank our hardworking TSA Agents and also, ICE, for the incredible help they have given us at the Airports,” Trump wrote on social media. “I will not allow the Radical Left Democrats to hold our Country hostage any longer.”
Trump’s decision will give both chambers of Congress, which are controlled by Republicans, a bit of cover to leave for their two-week spring break without actually reaching bipartisan compromise to fund DHS.
Democrats have held up the department’s funding bill in the Senate to demand new constraints on federal immigration actions after officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minnesota in January.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said shortly after Trump’s announcement that his decision “takes the immediate pressure off” lawmakers to make a deal, but that it’s a “short-term solution.”
Thune said “we’ll see” when asked if negotiations over the DHS funding bill would continue.
“I’ll have more to say about that here soon,” he said. “But we obviously are going to try and fund as much of the DHS budget as we possibly can.”
Thune hadn’t provided an update as of 10 p.m. Eastern as senators struggled to find a path forward.
Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said earlier in the evening that talks over funding the department continued with Republicans.
“There’s an active negotiation going on. I hope they don’t unilaterally decide to walk away. But that’s their decision,” he said. “They ultimately take orders from a higher power.”
Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz said around the same time “it’s just not true that we’re not in a negotiation.”
“It may be that one person or the other has lost patience and that would be too bad,” he said. “But we’re still talking.”
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said Trump made the right decision to choose to pay TSA agents as the shutdown drags on.
“I just got off the phone with the president,” he said. “The president is doing absolutely the right thing. He’s showing leadership.”
House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., released a statement saying the administration needs to explain to Congress what funding it plans to divert to pay TSA workers and why it didn’t take the step sooner.
“If the White House believes they have the authority to pay these workers, then every day for the past 41 days, they have been making a conscious decision not to pay them,” she said. “As the lines got longer, as workers called out, as agents quit or got second jobs, they chose again and again not to pay these workers.”
A senior administration official said the administration plans to use money from Republicans’ signature tax and spending package that was enacted last summer.
Union reaction
American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley said in a statement that while the union is “grateful” that TSA employees will be paid, lawmakers need to find a deal to fully fund the entire department.
“These workers and their families cannot wait,” he said. “All DHS workers must be paid immediately.
“Congress needs to continue working to pass a real, bipartisan appropriations deal that funds DHS, pays all DHS workers, and keeps these vital agencies running — even if that means canceling their upcoming vacation.”
