The Trump administration is offering buyouts for all federal remote employees as part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to get employees back into the office, but they only have until Feb. 6 to opt-in.

During Trump’s first week in office, he issued several directives to the federal workforce, including a requirement that remote employees must return to in-person work.

“After four years of incompetence and failure, President Donald Trump is committed to making our government efficient and productive again,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement on Tuesday. “American taxpayers pay for the salaries of federal government employees and therefore deserve employees working on their behalf who actually show up to work in our wonderful federal buildings, also paid for by taxpayers.

“If they don’t want to work in the office and contribute to making America great again, then they are free to choose a different line of work, and the Trump Administration will provide a very generous payout of eight months,” she added.

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On Tuesday, a government-wide email was sent out to ensure all federal workers were on board with the Trump administration’s plan.

The email pointed to four pillars that Trump set forth, to bring accountability back to the federal government, including a return to in-person work, restored accountability for employees who have policy-making authority, restored accountability for senior executives, and a reformed federal hiring process based on merit.

“The government-wide email being sent today is to make sure that all federal workers are on board with the new administration’s plan to have federal employees in office and adhering to higher standards,” a senior administration official said. “We’re five years past COVID and just 6 percent of federal employees work full-time in office. That is unacceptable.”

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Signage outside the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) headquarters in Washington, D.C.  (Samuel Corum/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The email noted that the majority of federal employees who have worked remotely since COVID will be required to return to their physical offices five days a week.

“Going forward, we also expect our physical offices to undergo meaningful consolidation and divestitures, potentially resulting in physical office relocations for a number of federal workers,” the email read.

For those who returned to office, the Trump administration thanked them for their “renewed focus” on serving the American people. But the future of their position could not be guaranteed, according to the email.

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The Pentagon is seen from Air Force One. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

For those who do not want to continue in their role with the federal workforce, the Trump administration thanked them for their services, informing them they will be provided with a “dignified, fair departure from the federal government utilizing a deferred resignation program.”

The program begins on Jan. 28 and will be available until Feb. 6, and should a federal employee choose to resign under the program, they will retain all pay and benefits, regardless of workload, and will be exempt from their in-person work requirements until Sep. 30, 2025.

The buyouts do not apply to military personnel of the armed forces, the U.S. Postal Services, positions related to immigration enforcement and national security, and any other positions specifically excluded by the agency the federal workers are employed by.

“To be clear, as it was with President Trump’s executive order on Day One, implementation of return-to-work policies will be done by each individual agency in accordance with applicable law,” the senior administration official said. “We expect 5 to 10 percent of federal employees to quit, and it could lead to $100 billion annually in savings for federal taxpayers.”

MEXICO CITY —  Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum hedged Tuesday on whether Mexico would accept U.S. military flights carrying deportees under the Trump administration’s mass-expulsion plans

“Until now, this hasn’t taken place,” Sheinbaum responded at her morning news conference when asked several times whether her nation would consent to Pentagon aircraft returning deported citizens. She declined to elaborate.

The White House has begun using military aircraft to transport deportees, including two Pentagon flights that flew more than 150 people to Guatemala last week.

The use of the military — including the deployment of active-duty troops to the United States’ southwest border — is a cornerstone of Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda. But it bumps up against Mexican sensitivities — heightened by a long history of U.S invasions and incursions — against military encroachment by its northern neighbor.

It is not clear whether Pentagon air assets would be deployed to transport deportees to Mexico. Media reports last week that Mexico refused a U.S. military flight that would have brought deportees have not been publicly confirmed by either country.

The military-transport issue has raised alarms throughout Latin America since a weekend diplomatic crisis in which an enraged President Trump moved to impose tariffs and other penalties on Colombia — a longtime U.S. ally — after President Gustavo Petro denied landing permission for two Pentagon aircraft carrying deportees.

After negotiations, the White House withdrew the threatened sanctions and Colombia said it had received assurances of the “dignified conditions” Petro had demanded. Petro said on social media that he had never refused to accept deportees but would not agree to their being returned handcuffed and on military aircraft.

The Brazilian government also denounced “degrading treatment” of its citizens after some deportees walked off a nonmilitary U.S. plane on Saturday in the northern city of Manaus in handcuffs and leg shackles.

The idea of giant C-17s flying over Mexican airspace and unloading deportees at Mexican airports is a potentially incendiary prospect in a country with a long memory of U.S. invasions; the nation lost much of its territory in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48.

Though Washington has not intervened militarily in Mexico for more than a century, Mexican youth are schooled in Mexico’s “heroic” resistance to past U.S. actions.

Many in Mexico are already unnerved at previous Trump threats to deploy the U.S. military against drug traffickers. His executive order to designate cartels as foreign terrorist organizations is viewed by many as a prelude to direct military intervention.

Already casting a shadow on binational relations are Trump’s threats to impose tariffs of 25% on Mexican imports if the country does not do more to stop U.S.-bound undocumented immigrants and the smuggling of fentanyl. Trump has indicated he would decide by Saturday on the tariffs — which could devastate a fragile economy heavily dependent on cross-border trade.

Sheinbaum is under pressure to bend to Trump’s demands in order to safeguard the economy, but she must also take care not to alienate citizens sensitive to perceived slights against Mexico’s sovereignty.

Protesters gather for a rally and march to Trump Tower in Chicago, with dozens of groups calling on the Trump administration to reconsider its policies on immigration and Gaza.

( Jacek Boczarski / Getty Images)

“President Sheinbaum is in a tight spot,” said Tony Payan, who heads the Center for the U.S. and Mexico at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. “The optics of military planes flying deportees back to Mexico would not be good for her nationalist base. But she may not have a choice other than to accept it.”

Mexican citizens are by far the largest nationality among the estimated more than 11 million immigrants in the United States illegally. In recent years, Washington has removed about 200,000 deportees annually to Mexico, mostly via the southwestern land border — but including some ferried by nonmilitary aircraft to the Mexican interior. The number of deportees returned to Mexico is widely expected to increase under Trump’s directives.

Sheinbaum has already agreed to accept Trump’s reinstatement of the controversial Remain in Mexico policy, which forces asylum-seekers arriving at the border — including Central Americans and other non-Mexicans — to wait in Mexico for adjudication of their cases in U.S. immigration courts. She has said Mexico would seek financial aid from Washington to reimburse the costs of repatriating third-country nationals to their homelands.

Mexico received four deportation flights last week— on nonmilitary aircraft — but has yet to see a significant uptick in returned deportees, officials say.

But Mexican authorities are erecting large-scale new shelters along the country’s northern border with the United States and making other preparations to house and otherwise assist repatriated citizens and third-country nationals sent to Mexico.

Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed.