Trump’s decision to pay ICE agents during shutdown sparks lawsuit

A Transportation Security Administration official has sued the U.S. government for withholding employee pay during the 43-day shutdown, arguing that he and other TSA officials are owed damages for the time they worked without receiving paychecks.

Benjamin Rodgers, who screens passengers at Denver International Airport, said in his complaint filed Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security violated federal wage law by paying some agency employees on time but not others. TSA officers and other “exempt” federal workers finally received an overdue lump sum, but not until after the record shutdown ended.

Rodgers told News themezone in an interview that many of his coworkers struggled to make ends meet while working without pay. The situation was so bad that supervisors told employees where to get free food at local pantries and how to get interest-free loans, he said.

“Some of them had to quit and get a separate job to be able to support their household with kids and stuff,” Rodgers said of his co-workers.

The complaint is a class action lawsuit that other TSA officers may be eligible to pursue. If a court were to award them damages, the government would likely have to pay the federal minimum wage of $7.25 for every hour the officers worked during the shutdown, as compensation beyond the back pay they received.

Rodgers may not have been able to make a case at all if not for some political astuteness by the Trump administration.

Federal employees generally go without pay during a government shutdown because Congress has not appropriated money for agencies to operate. But as this shutdown dragged on, DHS officials announced that they had somehow found a way to issue paychecks to select groups of the president’s favorite employees, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who are carrying out Trump’s deportation campaign.

“Rodgers may not have been able to make a case at all if not for some political astuteness by the Trump administration.”

In a previous shutdown case, an appeals court ruled that the government does not owe workers compensation for late payments because agencies have no choice but to withhold payment. But by freeing up money for ICE agents, the Trump administration proved it did They have a choice in the matter, said Rodgers’ attorney, David Seligman.

“They made the decision to choose between several employees,” said Seligman, whose nonprofit law firm, Towards Justice, is handling the case. “DHS has no excuse because even though they were not paying TSA agents, they were paying ICE agents who continue to detain people across the country.”

In other words, the administration made a political decision based on ideology.

DHS has not explicitly stated where the money came from to pay ICE and Border Patrol agents and other favored groups during the shutdown. As News themezone reported at the time, the agency’s human resources director said in a memo that issuing those paychecks despite the lapse in assignments was “consistent with the Administration’s commitment to law enforcement.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said 70,000 law enforcement officers, including some from the U.S. Secret Service and the Transportation Security Administration, would be paid “for all hours worked” during the shutdown.

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TSA agents were not among them, leaving them in the same situation as hundreds of thousands of other exempt federal workers: They were still checking in every day but weren’t sure when they would see their next check.

The government shutdown began on Oct. 1, when Democrats demanded that any funding deal include an extension of health insurance subsidies through the Affordable Care Act. Republican leadership dug in while the Trump administration inflicted every possible pain on Democrats, including by trying to stop food stamp payments to low-income Americans. The gap in appropriations became the longest on record before Democrats transferred at the beginning of November.

Whether they were laid off or working without pay, federal employees across the country felt like pawns in a political game. Seligman said the financial anxiety they experienced was one of the “real costs” exempt workers borne during the shutdown.

“That is what is intended to be remedied with compensation for damages,” he said.

TSA agents generally don’t make a lot of money. Many of the positions listed on the government employment exchange, usajobs.gov, Starts around $40,000, depending on area. For many years, TSA agents were in a lowest pay scale than other federal employees and have not enjoyed the same union rights as workers in other agencies. The Trump administration announced earlier this year that it would end collective bargaining in the agency for national security reasons.

Rodgers, who has worked for the TSA for about 16 months, said many of the passengers passing through airport security sympathized with the agents during the shutdown. Some even gave supervisors grocery store gift cards to give to their employees.

As the days went by without pay, Rodgers stopped traveling to save money on gas and avoided eating out. She said the uncertainty was much greater for her co-workers with children, which is one of the main reasons she decided to file the lawsuit.

He said: “I want to help other people as much as I can, so they get the fair wage they deserve.”