The Department of Homeland Security is set to run out of funding early Saturday morning, beginning a shutdown that could disrupt travelers, immigration enforcement and disaster relief.
Still, the lapse in funding is not expected to bring most of the department’s work to a halt. Department officials have said that its essential missions and functions would continue. During last fall’s government shutdown, more than 90 percent of the department’s employees were required to work.
But department officials have warned that many employees would be working without pay, posing a financial strain as their bills come due. During previous shutdowns, for instance, the Transportation Security Administration saw a spike in resignations because they were required to report to work without being paid. Work force shortages caused some screening delays at airports in Houston during last fall’s record-long shutdown.
The impending shutdown is the result of a partisan divide in Congress over new guardrails on federal immigration enforcement. Democrats have pushed for a range of new restrictions on immigration agents, such as mandating that officers remove masks during enforcement operations and that they obtain warrants from judges to make arrests in homes. Many of their demands have met resistance from Republicans.
A shutdown of the department would not derail the administration’s deportation campaign. Todd Lyons, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told lawmakers on Thursday that immigration enforcement would mostly be unaffected, in large part because of the billions in funding Congress approved for the agency last summer as part of its major tax bill. Still, Mr. Lyons said that a shutdown would affect personnel issues, such as pay and retention.
It is unclear how long a shutdown could last. Congress left Washington for a weeklong recess on Thursday. Leaders in Congress have said that negotiations would continue with lawmakers gone, and that members should be ready to return to Washington if an agreement is reached.
The Department of Homeland Security is vast and includes many agencies, such as the T.S.A., Coast Guard, Federal Emergency Management Agency and Customs and Border Protection.
About 95 percent of T.S.A.’s roughly 60,000 employees are required to work through a shutdown without being paid, Ha Nguyen McNeill, the agency’s acting administrator, told lawmakers this week.
Most FEMA employees are expected to continue working without pay, and agency leaders have said that its disaster relief fund has enough money for its current and anticipated emergency response activities. Still, the fund would be strained if a catastrophic disaster were to occur during a shutdown, according to agency leaders.
The Coast Guard’s uniformed personnel must also keep coming to work, and most are not expected to be paid until after a shutdown is over. Vice Adm. Thomas Allan, the acting vice commandant of the Coast Guard, said this week that a long shutdown would erode mission readiness and hurt morale. Certain training for pilots, aircrews and boat crews would stop, he said.
Although lawmakers had agreed to some limits on immigration enforcement when they negotiated the last funding bills of the fiscal year, Democrats pushed for more restrictions after two U.S. citizens were fatally shot by federal officers in Minneapolis last month. On Thursday, Tom Homan, the White House border czar, announced that the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota would end after more than two months and thousands of arrests in the region.
Madeleine Ngo covers immigration and economic policy for The Times.
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