By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, April 2 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he would soon sign an emergency order to pay all employees at the Department of Homeland Security who have worked without pay since mid-February as Congress has failed to reach a funding deal.
“I will soon sign an order to pay ALL of the incredible employees at the Department of Homeland Security,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
The U.S. Senate cleared the way early on Thursday for the House of Representatives to pass a DHS funding bill through September 30 that would end a nearly seven-week partial shutdown. The U.S. House met on Thursday but did not vote to approve a funding bill.
Tens of thousands of civilians at the U.S. Coast Guard, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Federal Emergency Management Agency and other agencies have not been paid since the government funding standoff began in February.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin praised Trump’s action “to ensure the hardworking men and women across DHS are paid.”
About 80,000 sworn law enforcement agents like the Secret Service, immigration officers and others have been paid during the shutdown.
The White House said in a memo it can pay DHS employees using funds from a large budget and tax bill approved by Congress last summer through additional executive action.
On Monday, 50,000 Transportation Security Administration airport security officers began getting paid after Trump signed an order last week to pay them.
The standoff led to daily absences of 10% or more of TSA workers and brought chaos and long security lines to U.S. airports.
Democrats in Congress have held up funding for the DHS while demanding a change in rules governing its immigration operations, after agents in Minneapolis shot and killed U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday rejected a bipartisan Senate compromise to end the deadlock over DHS funding.
Democrats had proposed funding TSA separately while negotiating over reforms on how Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents operate.
(Reporting by David Shepardson and Ryan Patrick Jones; Writing by Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Chris Reese)
