Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas blessed his employees with another three days of taxpayer-funded vacation time, bringing his four-year total to more than six weeks — the equivalent of $3 billion — of bonus time off.

Mr. Mayorkas, known to employees as “Santo Mayorkas” for his frequent vacation indulgences, announced the extra time off in a departing message this week to his workforce.

The move is not just a thank-you to the employees but also an aggressive challenge to the incoming Trump administration, which will have to decide whether to try to claw back the time and perhaps risk angering the workers.

Spending watchdogs wonder how a department that watches the borders, operates the Coast Guard and Secret Service, and staffs airport screening checkpoints can afford to give so much time off.

“The Department of Homeland Security is tasked with some of the federal government’s most foundational responsibilities. The last thing taxpayers need is to furnish them with more time off when most federal workers are not reporting to the office daily anyway,” said John Hart, CEO of Open the Books.

Administrative leave is an excused absence from work. Under federal personnel rules, agency chiefs can grant a maximum of 10 days annually.

Agencies use administrative leave to let employees stay home during snowstorms. Employees can also take administrative leave to vote in elections, and some department chiefs have used it to give employees an early release before a holiday.

Mr. Mayorkas has blazed new frontiers with his expansive use, to the point that people sell T-shirts and coins proclaiming him the patron saint of administrative leave.

His 269 hours total is likely a record for a single administration.

For a standard eight-hour workday, that means six weeks, three days and five hours of extra time off.

Agency records show Mr. Mayorkas granted 45 hours of extra time off in 2021, and he became more profligate. In 2022, he granted 48 hours, or six full days. He hit his stride in 2023 with nine full days of extra vacation and topped it last year with 10 days, or two full weeks.

He topped it off by delivering three final days this year.

The time is usually good through the next calendar year, meaning the three days he gave this week can be used until the end of 2026.

New federal workers are entitled to 13 days of annual leave. Those with at least three years in service get 20 days. Those who cross the 15-year mark get 26 days a year. Each employee also earns 13 sick days a year and 11 paid holidays.

With Mr. Mayorkas’ extra 10 days, a senior Homeland Security employee has enough time off to work less than four days a week, every week of the year.

Salary.com estimates the average hourly pay for a Homeland Security employee is $43. Given the department’s 260,000 workers, taxpayers are paying up to $3 billion for the extra vacation time Mr. Mayorkas has approved.

The department didn’t respond to an inquiry for this article, but Mr. Mayorkas and his team have defended the days as a reward for overworked employees.

Managers in Homeland Security agencies say the leave creates a bookkeeping nightmare as they struggle to track who has used the time and still has some coming. One manager said the department must trust employees and hope they aren’t abusing the system.

Mr. Mayorkas’ announcement swept through the ranks of government employees this week.

“This will never happen again. We lived through history here at DHS. His name will spoken through the halls for ages to come,” one department employee said on Reddit.

Workers at other agencies expressed envy.

“That guy rocks. I wish we all had a Mayorkas,” said another Reddit user.

Employees doubted that Mr. Trump would follow Mr. Mayorkas’ lead.

Indeed, the bigger question was whether Kristi Noem, Mr. Trump’s nominee for homeland security secretary, would try to claw back some of the time Mr. Mayorkas granted.

“Daddy has given us one last gift. Now, will Noem revoke it is another question,” said one user posting on Reddit’s Fednews forum. “Would be no better way to demoralize us into leaving.”

Among the dissident voices, one Redditor said, “No wonder the rest of the country hates federal employees.”

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