Trump says he’ll sign order to resume pay for Homeland Security workers

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President Donald Trump said Thursday he will soon sign an order to pay Department of Homeland Security employees who have gone without paychecks during the record-long partial government shutdown that has reached 48 days. Trump made the announcement in a social media post and said the move will resume pay by circumventing Congress. He said workers’ families “have suffered far too long.”

Trump’s action is expected to extend beyond DHS law enforcement employees to other workers, including many at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard and the department component that coordinates federal cybersecurity efforts. Trump also framed the order as support for “Brave and Patriotic Public Servants who have continued to work hard,” according to his remarks.

The order comes as the shutdown funding fight remains unresolved in Congress. There was no legislative resolution Thursday after both the House and Senate met for just a few minutes in pro forma sessions. The brief meetings did not end the impasse, even as Republicans and Trump have aligned around a two-step strategy to fully fund DHS.

Under the framework Republicans have been backing, Senate leaders have put aside the House approach and are working toward eventual agreement after separate paths left Congress in recess without a fix. During Thursday’s short Senate session, Senate Majority Leader John Thune set aside the House plan that would have funded the entire department for 60 days and indicated he expects the House to take up the Senate measure later. “I don’t know the particulars around what the House will do with it,” Thune told reporters. “My assumption is, at some point, hopefully, they’ll move it.”

The Senate measure would fund most of the department, but not the immigration enforcement agencies at the center of the dispute: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol. Republicans have said they would pursue funding for those agencies later, through party-line legislation that could take months. Democrats, including Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York, said the House failed to act on the Senate plan during Thursday’s brief morning session, and Schumer blamed House Republicans for “needlessly extending the DHS shutdown and hurting federal workers who are missing another paycheck.”

Speaker Mike Johnson’s role in moving toward the two-track plan has also changed quickly. Johnson and Thune announced Wednesday that they would return to the Senate measure that funds most of DHS but not ICE and Border Patrol. The agreement marked a sharp reversal from less than a week earlier, when Johnson derided the approach as a “joke” and said he was “quite convinced that it can’t be that every Senate Republican read the language of this bill.”

Republicans in the House faced immediate fallout after lawmakers left Washington for spring recess without a resolution. The episode drew public criticism, including a tabloid website that posted airport and travel paparazzi-style photos of members during the break. House Republicans later held a conference call Thursday to discuss next steps, with GOP leadership indicating they did not expect to recall lawmakers from recess and that they are due back April 14. Lawmakers also heard from White House budget director Russ Vought, and the White House is expected to release Trump’s 2027 budget proposal on Friday.

Funding ICE and Border Patrol remained a hurdle inside the GOP conference even as Trump signaled support for the two-step plan. Trump thanked Thune and Johnson and wrote that Republicans were “UNIFIED,” describing the approach as a path to “reload” funding for “our FANTASTIC Border Patrol and Immigration Enforcement Officers.” Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., said on X that the GOP should include ICE and Border Patrol in any deal, arguing that excluding them would mean “caving to Democrats” and not paying CBP and ICE.

Thune acknowledged potential obstacles to the later step, including efforts to broaden the bill’s scope. He said the goal is to keep the package “as narrow and focused as possible” so it can pass “with haste.” As for operations during the shutdown, most DHS employees reported to work, but many thousands went without pay.

The practical impact has also varied by component. As more Transportation Security Administration agents called out from work, there was increasing frustration for air travelers facing long waits at airport security lines, though the bottlenecks appeared to be clearing this week as agents began receiving backpay after Trump signed an executive order. About 10,000 FEMA workers are being paid because their wages come out of the non-lapsing Disaster Relief Fund, while at least 4,000 FEMA employees were furloughed or working without pay, according to the report.