Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has approved a request by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to reinstate 300 furloughed employees, a senior DHS official told the Washington Examiner.
The personnel have been out of work 30 days as a result of the partial government shutdown but will head back to the office Tuesday and will be paid for their work, the official said. Employees of the Immigration Records and Identity Services Directorate and other components of USCIS were notified Monday that they will be required to return to work in a day.
The group of reinstated personnel are from the agency’s E-Verify office, which oversees a program that companies can use to validate a job applicant’s legal ability to work in the country.
However, employees will not be going back to their normal jobs. All 300 workers will be trained starting Tuesday and then assigned to other USCIS jobs that have been deemed critical. They will continue in these new roles, the nature of which the official did not specify, until the shutdown concludes.
“USCIS is fortunate that our highly trained and experienced E-Verify staff are returning to help support the agency’s mission in other capacities until their program is fully functional. We’re thankful for their patience and flexibility during this time,” USCIS spokesman Michael Bars said in a statement.
USCIS will pay the employees their normal pay despite doing different jobs for an undisclosed length of time.
The initiative is being funded with exam fees. Bars did not share the costs involved of bringing hundreds of employees back to work.
E-Verify was suspended due to the shutdown, but those filling out paperwork to start jobs are still required to fill out the Employment Eligibility Verification, or I-9, form.
