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 two and a half years, has approved 115 hours of additional leave per employee so far. 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 to Homeland Security for this story over more than a week. A press officer said the department was “working” on a response but did not provide one by publication time.

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 doling out an additional three full days of vacation, the secretary mused on the ongoing pandemic, the border chaos, hate crimes and cyber attacks.

“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 to be taken any time through the end of the following year. So the extra holiday he granted for July 4 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 it’s 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 do occasionally grant a government-wide vacation day, often with an extra day around Christmastime.

But 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 they issued extra leave.

And a spokesman for the Veterans Affairs Department, which rivals Homeland Security in size, said they don’t grant leave beyond what has been authorized by the White House of the Office of Personnel Management.

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

Homeland Security regularly ranks near the bottom on the government’s annual employee satisfaction survey, in a trend that stretches back well before Mr. Mayorkas’s 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 the new unauthorized arrivals.

Employees in those agencies saw Mr. Mayorkas’s extra vacation as an attempt at paying trying to buy employee’s affection.

“Trying to buy friends,” one employee said.

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

“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 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 has also 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.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.