DHS officials implore lawmakers not to force their employees to endure more delayed pay during a shutdown

Leaders at the Homeland Security Department pleaded with lawmakers on Wednesday not to force their employees to endure another government shutdown, saying their offices are still reeling from the previous funding lapse and their employees cannot afford more delayed paychecks. 

Operations at the non-immigration agencies within DHS will suffer long-term damage from any extended shutdown of the department, officials told House appropriators at a hearing just two days before a lapse is set to occur. Every other agency in government has received full-year funding for fiscal 2026, but Democrats have withheld their votes for DHS as they seek reforms to President Trump’s immigration enforcement crackdown in the wake of multiple citizens being fatally shot by department employees. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection officials did not testify at the hearing before the DHS panel of the House Appropriations Committee, as those agencies can tap funding provided by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to continue operations and, most likely, ensure on-time pay. The vast majority of DHS employees—around 92%, across the department—would still report to work, though non-ICE and CBP workers would likely not be paid until Congress approves a new spending bill. 

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., who chairs the full appropriations committee, told the DHS leaders that their employees should not be used for leverage while lawmakers sort out other issues related to immigration enforcement. 

“It's not legitimate to use this bill as a hostage and use the men and women that you supervise to work with as pawns in a larger struggle,” Cole said. “They should get paid. They should get the resources they need. They should get them on time.”

Officials from DHS components said they would suffer in the following ways during a shutdown:

• U.S. Coast Guard: The service would curtail training for pilots, air crews and boat crews, Vice Commandant Adm. Thomas Allan said. He added aircraft and boats would degrade as scheduled maintenance is deferred and the flow of spare parts is cut off, leading to grounded aircraft and static cutters. Employee output also tends to suffer during shutdowns, he said, as they are distracted and stressed by the lack of pay.“These jobs require dedication, focus and attention to detail,” Allan said. “Any distraction puts the member mission, crew and unit at risk.”
• Transportation Security Administration: During the 43-day shutdown last fall, acting Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill said, TSA saw spikes in unscheduled absences and, in some cases, increases in wait times at airports for screenings. The situation was exacerbated as the lapse dragged on and “the situation became untenable for frontline employees,” she said. TSA saw a 25% increase in attrition from the same six-week period the year before the shutdown, which McNeill said the agency can ill-afford as it prepares for increased traffic during spring break and the upcoming World Cup. “It’s affecting recruiting as we speak,” she said of the lingering uncertainty. 
• U.S. Secret Service: The protection agency is undergoing significant reforms, Matthew Quinn, the Secret Service’s deputy director, said, which would all be set back under a funding lapse. The "impacts may not be seen tomorrow," he said, but the ripple effects from delayed contracts, diminished hiring and the halting of new programs would be felt "for some time." 
• Federal Emergency Management Agency: States and localities would see significant impacts from another shutdown, Gregg Phillips, FEMA's associate administrator in the Office of Response and Recovery, told lawmakers, as the agency's ability to process payments under the Disaster Relief Fund would be diminished. “The most important thing as it relates to the lapse, from our perspective, is not our ability to respond in the emergency, it's our ability to adequately support the states during recovery,” Phillips said. 
• Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency: CISA would see diminished capability in its cyber response, security assessments, stakeholder engagements, training exercises and special event planning, Madhu Gottumukkala, the agency’s acting director said. Unlike most DHS components, CISA would furlough a majority of its workforce and just one-third would remain on the job.

Several officials noted their agencies are still feeling the impacts of the shutdown last fall. FEMA is still “working our way out” of the delayed payments to states from the previous lapse, Phillips said. TSA employees were “subject to late fees from missed bill payments, eviction notices, loss of child care and more,” McNeill said, adding the toll on the workforce could not be overstated. 

“Twelve weeks later, some are just recovering from the financial impact of the 43-day shutdown,” she said. “Many are still reeling from it.” 

Lawmakers from both parties agreed that employees should not suffer as lawmakers debate policy changes. 

“We should make sure that men and women that we have already put in a terrible position once for 43 days don't have to go through it again,” Cole said. 

Democrats said they, too, wanted to avoid a shutdown and pointed to the list of changes to ICE and CBP operations they have proposed as a path to staving one off. Absent that, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the spending panel, advocated for a bill she introduced on Wednesday that would fund every DHS agency aside from ICE and CBP. Republicans are unlikely to support such a measure, however. 

Instead, Republican leaders are looking to pass another stopgap continuing resolution for DHS. Time is limited to pass such a bill, however, and it is not yet clear whether a sufficient number of Senate Democrats would approve it. 

If Congress fails to act by Friday’s deadline, DHS could be in for an extended lapse: the House is currently scheduled to be on recess the entire following week.