Mullin: No more money to pay DHS employees as of May

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Tuesday his department will run out of money to pay employees’ salaries the first week of May, as lawmakers race to end a two-month shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.

Appearing on “Fox and Friends” Tuesday morning, the secretary outlined that money to pay salaries came from the funds Congress allocated to DHS last year via President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. But DHS has an extensive payroll burden, Mullin said, and if the department isn’t funded, that extra pot of money will dry up early next month.

“My payroll through DHS is just over $1.6 billion every two weeks, so the money is going extremely fast and once that happens, there is no emergency funds after that,” Mullin said. “I’ve got one payroll left and there is no more emergency funds, so the president can’t do another executive order because there’s no more money there.”

The incredibly candid admission about DHS’ financial straits comes as Republicans are trying to put forward a funding package that would fund most of the agencies under the Department of Homeland Security, while punting funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection down the line for a budget reconciliation package.

Mullin added that almost two-thirds of the department’s workforce remains furloughed and called on Democrats to explain why they are “putting homeland at risk” and urged that Democratic holdouts be “held accountable.”

Democrats say Republicans are to blame for not passing a bipartisan bill that unanimously cleared the Senate in March that would fund most of the department.

Trump has given lawmakers until June 1 to pass a funding bill to cover the immigration enforcement agencies, as Democrats continue to oppose additional funding for ICE and CBP without changes to the way they carry out immigration enforcement operations. In the meantime, Trump directed DHS to bankroll DHS paychecks by tapping into a $10 billion pot of funding Republicans enacted last summer in their party-line megabill. That fund intended for "border support" was down to less than $1.4 billion as of late last week.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the Senate Budget Committee chair, is expected Tuesday to put forward a resolution that would direct relevant committees to draft funding legislation for ICE and CBP. That bill could clear the Senate as soon as Thursday.

House GOP leaders said Tuesday they will push ahead with a plan to first start work on the immigration enforcement reconciliation path, and wait to pass the Senate-approved bill to fund the remainder and majority of DHS.

But privately, Johnson's GOP leadership circle is still waiting to see if they could advance the bulk of DHS funding before Hill Republicans finalize and fully pass the separate immigration enforcement bill. That immigration enforcement GOP-only bill is going to take Republicans until at least the end of May to complete, and the Trump administration is warning DHS is running out of funding.

House conservatives are demanding that House GOP leaders at the very least alter the language in the Senate-passed bill to fund all of DHS except immigration enforcement before they attempt to advance it in the House, according to three people involved in the conversations. All were granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations.

Those conservatives want House GOP leaders to wait until they pass the immigration enforcement money to move the remainder of DHS funding bill, or strip out language in the Senate-passed DHS bill that explicitly zeroes out immigration enforcement money in ICE and CBP.

Democrats have argued that Republicans are cutting a "blank check" for the agencies with such a funding framework.

Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.