The Club PUBlication 02/16/2026

​IN DHS SHUTDOWN, MANY WORK, FEW PAID
Officials say they worry about morale during latest funding lapse.

​By KAROUN DEMIRJIAN and MADELEINE NGO • The New York Times
WASHINGTON 

​— Funding for the Department of Homeland Security lapsed early Saturday, with no breakthrough in negotiations and no clear sign of when it might be revived.

The shutdown of the sprawling department is the result of a bitter impasse over the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in cities including Minneapolis . Democrats do not want to fund the department unless Congress imposes rules requiring immigration officers to identify themselves during operations, remove their masks and obtain judicial warrants to make arrests on private property. Republicans have rejected those demands as overly burdensome.

But the lapse in funding is not expected to bring the department's immigration enforcement operations to a screeching halt. And the department is home to several agencies unrelated to immigration, including the Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, that will be affected.

During last fall's recordlong federal shutdown, more than 90% of the department's employees were required to work. The department has not updated its public guidance for funding lapses since then, but it is expected to handle a DHSfocused shutdown similarly.

"DHS essential missions and functions will continue as they do during every shutdown," the department said in a statement. "However, during a shutdown, many employees will be forced to work without pay, putting strain on the frontline defenders of our nation."

Here's how the shutdown could affect some of the department's most visible activities.

Immigration enforcement
The agencies at the heart of the dispute over DHS funding will almost certainly be among the least affected by a department shutdown. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which employs about 22,000 officers, and Customs and Border Protection, which employs more than 60,000 officials, perform work seen as essential to public safety, and employees can therefore be legally required to work, even without pay. (Under a 2019 law, they — like others employed directly by the federal government — are entitled to back pay once funding resumes.) ICE in particular has an extra cushion: Last summer, Congress drastically expanded its operating budget as part of a sweeping domestic policy bill with an extra $75 billion, resources it can use to ride out a lapse in funding.

Airport security
About 95% of the Transportation Security Administration's roughly 60,000 employees are required to report to work through a shutdown without being paid, according to the agency's acting administrator, Ha Nguyen McNeill.

Still, during the fall's shutdown, that open-ended requirement proved untenable to many workers, who found it difficult to ride out what became a 43-day shutdown without taking side jobs. TSA saw a spike in resignations after that shutdown, McNeill told lawmakers this week, while she noted that the agency was trying to increase hiring before the World Cup later this year.

Disaster response
Nearly 85% of Federal Emergency Management Agency employees are expected to work without pay through any shutdown, based on how the agency handled last fall's lapse in funding.

FEMA's disaster relief fund has enough money to carry out its current and anticipated emergency response activities, according to Gregg Phillips, the associate administrator for the agency's Office of Response and Recovery. But if a catastrophic disaster were to occur during a Homeland Security Department shutdown, the fund "would be seriously strained," he told lawmakers last week.

FEMA would find it difficult to reimburse states for disaster relief operations quickly, Phillips said. Those delays could in turn slow recovery efforts, he added.

Immigration benefits
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that processes green cards, naturalization and other benefit applications, is largely funded by fees it charges applicants, so most operations would typically continue during a shutdown. During the last shutdown, a vast majority of the agency's roughly 22,000 employees continued working.
Some programs do receive appropriated funds, including E-Verify, which allows employers to check their employees' eligibility to work in the country.

During the last shutdown, the program was temporarily suspended. In a statement Thursday, Matthew Tragesser, an agency spokesperson, said the administration would "take decisive action to keep E-Verify open during a shutdown."

Coast Guard
Although the Coast Guard is part of the Homeland Security department, it operates like any other branch of the military when it comes to government shutdowns: Uniformed personnel must keep coming to work, even though most of them will not be paid until after the shutdown is over.

Vice Admiral Thomas Allan, the acting vice commandant of the Coast Guard, has warned that a prolonged shutdown would erode mission readiness and hurt morale.

Cybersecurity operations
Most employees at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which helps protect the country's election system, power grids and water utilities, will be furloughed during the shutdown.

The agency is requiring 888 of its 2,341 employees to continue working, many of them without pay.

Secret Service
About 94% of the Secret Service's workforce of more than 8,000 is staying on the job, many without pay, during the shutdown. Matthew C. Quinn, the deputy director of the agency, said Wednesday that agents would continue to protect the president and vice president, along with their families. They would also continue to protect former presidents and their spouses, in addition to visiting heads of state and other top government officials. Still, Quinn warned about fading morale "as bills come due."