Back pay snafu leaves 4,000 former INS employees in limbo

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau will pay about $10 million to compensate Homeland Security Department employees for missed pay dating as far back as January 2002, officials said Monday.

About 4,000 former Immigration and Naturalization Services employees are owed back pay for time they attended the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center from January 2002 to August 2003, said Charles Showalter, president of the American Federation of Government Employees' National Homeland Security Council 117. The employees worked six days a week, but only received pay for five days a week.

According to Showalter, during the past year the union was given several reasons for why employees have yet to be paid, including that the National Finance Center has its own backlog to deal with, the necessary funding has been held up in the budget for ICE, funding codes have yet to be clarified, and the funding has been spent by ICE on other activities.

"We've been going round and round trying to get this paid off. It's been one thing after another," Showalter said. "You take your left hand and point to the right, and you take your right hand and point to the left and say, 'Not me.' "

The affected employees are now dispersed throughout the Homeland Security Department within ICE and the Customs and Border Protection and Citizenship and Immigration Services bureaus.

ICE spokesman Russ Knocke said Monday that his agency is responsible for paying the employees. Some already have been paid, he added, and the remainder will receive compensation with interest by May 2005. He confirmed that about 4,000 employees in total were due back pay.

Knocke said an e-mail also will be sent to current and former employees who are due back pay explaining the timetable for payment and affirming ICE's commitment to resolving the matter.

ICE has the money in its budget to make the payment while it continues to perform national security missions, Knocke said. "This is the type of expenditure that we can and will make," he said.

Showalter was pleased to hear payment would be forthcoming.

"I am very encouraged that ICE is standing up on behalf of the entire department," he said. "It appears that [ICE Director Michael] Garcia is making a conscious effort to ensure that this issue is taken care of."

In a letter last month to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, Showalter said payment was authorized as far back as August 2003.

"While it is clear the agency intent was that these payments should be processed as quickly as possible and every effort would be made in following uniform procedures to ensure that every employee receive the correct reimbursement, neither of these actions have taken place to date, fully one year later," the letter states. "In many instances, this translates to employees who have patiently waited for over two and one-half years for their employer - the federal government - to repay them for obligated performance of duty."

The letter also was sent to CIS Director Eduardo Aguirre and CIS associate director for operations William Yates.

The union never received an official response to the letter, Showalter said.

CBP spokeswoman Christiana Halsey said her agency also wants to see the matter resolved because many of the affected employees now work for CBP.

"It affects our current employees," Halsey said. "These are some of the growing pains of ensuring that we get everything settled and the unification process takes place and the agencies are able to move forward. We want to resolve this because the last thing that people need to be focusing on when they're on the front line is if they are being paid properly."

The amount owed to employees is expected to total about $10 million.