Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned Tuesday that the DHS is running out of options to keep paying workers during the partial government shutdown, saying emergency funds used to cover payroll could be exhausted by early May.
Speaking on Fox & Friends, Mullin said the department's payroll burden is simply too large to sustain much longer without congressional action. "That money is dried up if I continue down this path the first week of May, because my payroll at DHS is just over $1.6 billion every two weeks," Mullin said. He added that after the next paycheck, "There is no more emergency fund, so the president can't do another executive order for us to use money, because there's no more money there."
The warning applies to roughly 50,000 Transportation Security Administration workers whose pay has been temporarily supported through emergency steps ordered by President Donald Trump last month.
This is the latest sign that the shutdown's effects are moving from Washington brinkmanship into daily operations across the country. Reuters reported that U.S. airports could face another round of severe delays as soon as May if funding is not restored after earlier disruptions left some security lines stretching beyond four hours, the longest in the TSA's nearly 25-year history. More than 500 TSA officers have quit since mid-February.
The current fight stems from a broader standoff in Congress over DHS funding and immigration enforcement. In March, lawmakers failed to break the impasse even after the Senate passed a bill that would have restored funding for most DHS operations while leaving out Immigration and Customs Enforcement funding, a compromise Democrats could support.
House Republicans instead advanced a stopgap bill funding all of DHS through late May, including immigration enforcement, a proposal Democrats rejected. At the center of the deadlock is a bitter dispute over ICE and Border Patrol. Democrats have argued that any new DHS funding should come with tighter constraints on immigration enforcement, including rules requiring judicial warrants before agents enter private homes.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said at the time, "We've been clear from day one: 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." Republicans, meanwhile, have pushed for broader DHS funding without those restrictions.
Trump previously intervened to keep TSA workers paid after weeks of missed paychecks caused growing chaos at airports during the spring travel season. Reuters reported that his late-March emergency order allowed DHS to tap available funds to start paying airport screening officers again, but it did not solve the larger budget problem affecting the department's roughly 270,000 employees. Many other DHS personnel, including workers involved in emergency response and coastal defense, have remained caught in the wider funding standoff.
Business groups are now pressuring Congress to act.
Airlines for America CEO Chris Sununu told Reuters that lawmakers need to move quickly, saying, "You cannot ask these TSA officers to go through this a third time." Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said Senate Republicans will move forward on a budget blueprint designed to boost DHS funding for the next three years, but it remains unclear whether that effort can resolve the immediate payroll crunch.
