Chimney Rock, North Carolina — Markwayne Mullin, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, promised Tuesday that DHS employees affected by the ongoing government shutdown can expect to receive paychecks by the end of the week.

Mullin, who was traveling for his first official visit as DHS secretary, in Chimney Rock, North Carolina, said department employees who’ve been working without pay for the past six weeks would see the missing payments covering recent pay periods in their accounts soon. 

“We expect most of those checks to be in their banks by Friday,” he told CBS News. “Some of the financial institutions may have to wait till Monday, but the majority of everybody will be paid by then.” 

The secretary said the payments are being made possible through executive action and existing funding flexibility, but he warned that future payroll for DHS employees — outside of law enforcement officials — would depend entirely on Congress. 

“Going forward, we got to wait on Congress. This was kind of a rifle shot,” he said, noting the high cost of DHS payroll every two weeks.

Mullin pulled no punches in dressing down Democrats for the delay. 

“They’re willing to defund and shut down 22 agencies that are tasked to keep the homeland safe,” he said, likening DHS, the third largest department in the federal government, to the biggest, the Pentagon. Despite the funding lapse, Mullin said DHS operations remain active, crediting employees who have continued to report to work without the certainty of pay. “People are still showing up to work … that’s a tremendous amount of dedication from employees that I get to be over right now,” he said.

When pressed by CBS News on the source of the appropriations, Mullin said the Trump administration is relying on a provision that gives the president limited the ability to move funds in emergencies. He described it as allowing DHS “a little bit of flexibility … with the dollars that were set up to allow us to do stuff just like this,” but he emphasized the move required executive action and is not a long-term solution.