Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents who have been working without wages during the ongoing partial government shutdown could get paid as soon as Monday, at the order of President Donald Trump, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed to TIME.
“Today, at the direction of President Trump and the Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, TSA has immediately begun the process of paying its workforce,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement to TIME on Friday. “TSA officers should begin seeing paychecks as early as Monday, March 30.”
The spokesperson called the ongoing shutdown an “emergency” and a “crisis.”
“TSA officers are now losing their homes and cars, struggling to put food on the table, and are experiencing all-around financial catastrophe because of this extended shutdown, the 3rd they’ve experienced in just 6 months,” the spokesperson said. “Travelers are facing record breaking wait times stretching hours and hours long causing missed flights, unnecessary delays, and booking headaches.”
In a presidential memorandum issued on Friday, Trump said that he has “determined that these circumstances constitute an emergency situation compromising the Nation’s security,” and, as a result, directed Mullin and the Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, “to use funds that have a reasonable and logical nexus to TSA operations to provide TSA employees with the compensation and benefits that would have accrued to them if not for” the shutdown.
Funding for DHS, which includes TSA, lapsed on Feb. 14, amid a standoff between Democrats and Republicans over immigration enforcement. The shutdown has thrown air travel into chaos this month. TSA agents are deemed essential workers, and so are required to work during a shutdown—even without pay. Many TSA staffers have had to take on other jobs to pay their bills, and so a high number of employees have called out of work at some airports in recent weeks. As a result, airports across the country have grappled with staffing shortages among TSA officers, leading to hours-long security lines.
It seemed on Friday as if Congress might be approaching a deal to fund TSA and most of DHS, after the Senate passed a bill that would do so while excluding Immigration and Customs Enforcement and parts of Customs and Border Protection from receiving funding. But later on Friday, House Speaker Mike Johnson rejected the bill, calling it a “joke.”
The post TSA Agents Could Get Paid as Soon as Monday Following Trump Order, DHS Says appeared first on TIME.
