Linda Hernandez makes $62,000 per year as a secretary at the Federal Detention Center in downtown Houston, a salary she supplements by picking up overtime shifts as a corrections officer. Now, she’s not getting paid for either.

Hernandez, who has worked at the detention center for nearly 20 years, will miss her first paycheck Friday and doesn’t expect to get another one until at least Jan. 25 as the federal government shutdown drags on through its third week. But the bills keep coming for Hernandez, who supports a daughter, a son and a grandchild. And to add her financial squeeze, her ex-husband is a furloughed federal employee who won’t be able to make his child support payments until he gets paid.

“You don’t expect things like this to happen to you,” said Hernandez, a member of the American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing workers at the detention center. “With kids to support, as a mother, you feel like you let them down. Emotionally, I’m just drained.”

Hernandez is among some 800,000 federal employees, including nearly 30,000 in Houston, who will miss paycheck Friday, with little hope of receiving one anytime soon as the political stalemate over President Donald Trump’s border wall shows few signs of ending. By Saturday, the shutdown, nearly three weeks old, will become the longest in history.

Resources for federal employees: Sample letters for creditors and mortgage companies can be found at opm.gov. Federal workers, either furloughed or essential, can apply for unemployment with the Texas Workforce Commission. Employees have to repay benefits if they are paid retroactively when the shutdown is over. Some banks and credit unions are offering low or zero interest loans during the shutdown to federal employees. The Johnson Space Center holds an open house for NASA employees at Gilruth Center Alamo Ballroom to help them file for unemployment during the furlough as well as talk about loan options through the JSC Federal Credit Union. More information: https://jscsos.com/jsc-unites-employee-furlough-support-open-house/.

Read More

On HoustonChronicle.com: Border wall shutdown prevents employers from confirming immigration status

Federal employees deemed essential, including most of the more than 200 at the Federal Detention Center at 1200 Texas Ave., are working without pay due to the government shutdown. Others at agencies such as the national parks, NASA and some IRS employees have been sent home or furloughed.

Holly Griffith, an engineer NASA's Johnson Space Center, and her husband have cut spending and dipped into their savings to try to get through the shutdown. But if it stretches on much longer, she said, she’ll have to borrow money. And worse, she added, she’ll probably have to borrow from her mother, a Trump supporter.

“It’s just weird because I’m used to always being able to take care of myself,” said Griffith, 40, a safety engineer for life support systems on Orion, the spacecraft that will take humans back to the moon. “I really don’t want to take a loan from [my mom] but it’s free money. You do what you’ve got to do.”

What another NASA engineer did was launch a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for federal employees struggling to pay bills ahead of their first missed paycheck Friday. Johanna Petrocelli, who has worked at the Houston center since 2014, reported on her GoFundMe page that she raised $1,302 as of Thursday morning “to help anyone (affected) by the furlough pay specifically for medical/child care/animal care bills.”

More than 3,000 federal employees, excluding contractors, work at the Johnson Space Center. They and other federal workers will likely get back pay once the government reopens, but that doesn’t help when mortgage payments, utility bills and credit cards are due. Or the refrigerator is empty. Or the car needs gas to get to get to work.

Clifton J. Buchanan, who has been a corrections officer for 20 years, said missing a check will add the the financial squeeze his family is feeling. Uncertainty about when he might get paid again has already led them to cut spending on everything except essentials, such as food. They have paid minimums on bills to conserve cash and limited travel around town to save on gasoline.

“You literally have to figure out what bill you have to pay and whether or not you’re going to eat,” said Buchanan, 49, the regional vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees.

Buchanan, a disabled veteran, supports his wife and 11-year old daughter on annual earnings of about $78,000. But, he noted that he is better off than younger and new corrections officers. An entry level correctional officer in Houston makes $47,031, about $2,000 less than Houston’s median household income of about $49,000.

“Most of these people are not rich,” Buchanan said. “We live paycheck to paycheck. Our paycheck is enough to set you over the edge and then you’re not able to catch up.”

Missing payments on bills can have a particularly tough effect on corrections officers, union officials added. Federal correction officers undergo background checks every five years, and can receive disciplinary action or lose their jobs depending on the results. It includes a credit check, under the rationale that officers who have financial difficulties are vulnerable to bribes from inmates and compromising the security of the prison.

Rey Osorio, the local union representative for correctional officers, has worked for the detention center as a correctional officer since it opened in 1999. When the government was shut down in 2013, he said, he sought to delay payments on his mortgage by bringing a letter provided by the government that explained his situation to his lender. The lender didn’t go for it.

The federal Office of Personnel Management’s website issued similar letters for this shutdown, but many employees doubted they would have better luck with utility companies or landlords.

A staffing shortage the detention center has made the shutdown more onerous for correction officers, who are working overtime without pay, said Osorio. Eighteen positions are vacant, according to human resources documents obtained by Osorio.

One way that the detention center tries to alleviate shortages is through a practice known as augmentation, in which employees like the secretary Hernandez, are used as correctional officers to fill shifts. Additional training is provided to employees, but the most recent training was scheduled for this week and the shutdown canceled it. In the meantime, augmentation has been used much more frequently for the past two years, sources said.

Related: NASA employee starts GoFunMe for hurting federal workers

Some officers got their last paycheck on Jan. 3, but it was incomplete because they did not get paid for Dec. 22, the first day of the shutdown, or for overtime worked during the last pay period. Christian Schmale, a union member who works at the prison as a senior officer specialist, said his check was about $1,000 less than what he expected.

“It’s very difficult to understand how some departments are funded and other parts are being left out,” Schmale said. “Senators and their staffers are fully taken care of, and we’re left in the dark.”

Susan Anderson, a protocol officer at the Johnson Space Center, has spent the last week adjusting her schedule for paying bills, making sure to pay the mortgage and credit cards, while holding off on bills not due until the end of the month. She’s hoping that political leaders will resolve their differences soon so everyone can get back to work and, most importantly, get paid again.

“I hope we see an end to this so we can get back to work on Monday,” she said. “We’re getting pretty tired of it.”

President Trump said on Dec. 11 that he would be “proud” to shutdown the government if Congress can’t make a deal that includes the wall. More recently, Trump said the shutdown could last, “months or even years.”

In the meantime, for workers like Hernandez, that prediction borders on the unthinkable.

“I can’t be superwoman,” Hernandez said. “My number one concern is not being able to provide for my kids and making sure we have a meal.”

erin.douglas@chron.com

alex.stuckey@chron.com