Trump’s action comes as airport security lines stretch for hours with TSA agents leaving after several missed paychecks. The House and Senate have yet to agree on a measure to fund the Department of Homeland Security.
On Monday, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers began receiving paychecks for back pay missed during the ongoing shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Funding for the agency lapsed on February 14.
President Trump signed an executive order on Friday ordering TSA officers to be paid in an effort to reduce wait times at airports that have become unbearable for the public.
“Most TSA employees received a retroactive paycheck today that included at least two paychecks covering pay periods 4 and 5 today,” said DHS spokesperson Lauren Bis in a statement. The shutdown began midway through pay period 3.
She said DHS is “working aggressively” with the relevant financial institutions “to complete processing for the half paycheck they are owed from pay period 3 as soon as possible.”
The executive order has taken some pressure off of Congress to fund the Department of Homeland Security, as tensions continue to rise over funding for ICE and the partial shutdown drags on.
On Friday, House Republicans rejected a bipartisan deal struck in the Senate to fund DHS. The agreement would have funded TSA, but excluded funding for immigration enforcement as the Trump administration cracks down on illegal immigration across the United States.
The bipartisan agreement that the House rejected passed the Senate by unanimous consent.
“The gambit that was done last night is a joke,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told reporters after the Senate passed their bipartisan deal. “I’m quite convinced that it can’t be that every Senate Republican read the language of this bill.”
The House instead passed a partisan package that would fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. It is not expected to pass in the Senate, leaving DHS shut down as lawmakers leave Washington for the next two weeks.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has already said in a statement that the bill will be “dead on arrival” in the Senate. “Democrats will fund critical Homeland Security functions – but we will not give a blank check to Trump’s lawless and deadly immigration militia without reforms,” Schumer said.
On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that President Trump was “encouraging Congress to come back to Washington to permanently fix this problem and to fund and reopen the Department of Homeland Security entirely.”
Lawmakers remain on a two-week recess with no word on when they will return to Washington to sort out the DHS funding crisis.
