Buying friends: Mayorkas gave $1 billion in extra vacation to DHS employees

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Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has granted his employees more than $1 billion worth of additional taxpayer-funded vacation time, according to department staffers, who say Mr. Mayorkas is using taxpayers’ money in an ill-fated attempt to win affection from an alienated workforce.

Mr. Mayorkas, who has been on the job for roughly 2½ years, has approved 115 hours of additional leave per employee. That includes 45 hours, or more than a full extra week off, in his first year, followed by 48 hours in 2022 and 24 hours so far this year.

Figuring 260,000 department employees and an average hourly pay of about $40 per employee, that means Mr. Mayorkas has doled out at least $1.2 billion in additional taxpayer-funded vacation time. Law enforcement and high cost-of-living locality pay could mean the actual figure is significantly higher.

“The numbers are astounding,” said Emilio Gonzalez, who ran one of the department’s agencies in the Bush years. “You’re hovering at just over a billion dollars right now, on the low end. And for an agency that’s constantly pleading poverty, that’s a lot of money.”

The vacations have become a bit of a joke among department employees and a headache for managers who say there’s so much extra time floating around that they have trouble keeping track of it all.

The Washington Times made multiple inquiries for more than a week to the Department of Homeland Security for this report. A press officer said the department was “working” on a response but did not provide one by publication time.

A day after the article was published, the department provided a statement saying the department’s employees are “working long hours” doing important work and needed a morale boost.

“DHS employees, and the families who serve alongside them, are extraordinary public servants who make great sacrifices to advance our mission,” the department said. “These unusually difficult jobs deserve our respect, and offering administrative leave is a show of that respect that serves the public interest by contributing to employee morale.”

In his messages announcing the extra time off, Mr. Mayorkas calls it a reward for putting up with tough circumstances and challenges.

In December 2021, while handing out an additional three full days of vacation, the secretary mused on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the border chaos, hate crimes and cyberattacks.

“It has been a difficult year, yet because of you all it has been a year of tremendous achievement and service,” he said, calling the extra leave “recognition of your sacrifice, dedication and achievements.”

This March, as Homeland Security celebrated its 20th year of existence, Mr. Mayorkas said the occasion merited another day off for workers “in recognition of your extraordinary sacrifices and contributions in the service of our country.”

In June, ahead of Independence Day, the secretary granted another eight hours as a sign of his “gratitude. for everything you do for our great country.”

The leave is usually available anytime through the end of the following year. So the extra holiday he granted for July Fourth can be banked through the end of 2024.

Chad Wolf, who served as acting secretary in the Trump administration, said time off is allowed but is generally issued on a case-by-case basis as an award.

“Handing out time off is extremely unusual and is typically reserved for extraordinary service,” he said.

Presidents occasionally grant a governmentwide vacation day, often with an extra day around Christmas.

It seems out of the ordinary for a department head to be so profligate.

A spokeswoman at the Defense Department, the government’s largest, said she didn’t think the Pentagon issued extra leave.

A spokesman for the Veterans Affairs Department, which rivals Homeland Security in size, said the agency doesn’t grant leave beyond what has been authorized by the Office of Personnel Management.

OPM didn’t respond to an inquiry from The Times for this article.

Homeland Security regularly ranks near the bottom on the government’s annual employee satisfaction survey. The trend stretches back well before Mr. Mayorkas’ time as secretary, or even a previous stint as deputy secretary in the Obama years.

The sprawling department has always felt a bit like Frankenstein’s monster, stitched together with parts cannibalized from other departments after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

In recent years, the chaos at the border has proved particularly draining, with employees from the department’s three immigration agencies being pushed to try to process and welcome unauthorized arrivals.

Employees in those agencies saw Mr. Mayorkas’ extra vacation handouts as an attempt to buy employees’ affection.

“Trying to buy friends,” one employee said.

If that is Mr. Mayorkas’ goal, it’s not likely to work, Mr. Gonzalez said.

“If morale is low, this is not going to solve the morale issue, but it is going to aggravate the financial issue that the agency faces,” he said.

The $1.2 billion is a small fraction of Homeland Security’s annual budget, but it does represent a significant chunk of change nonetheless.

President Biden has just submitted a request to Congress for an emergency injection of $1.4 billion into Customs and Border Protection to handle the chaos at the border.

Mr. Biden also has requested nearly $900 million in taxpayer money next year for USCIS, an agency that is supposed to be run on fees paid by immigrants or their sponsors.