42 U.S.C. § 267 — Quarantine stations, grounds, and anchorages

(a) Control and management The Surgeon General controls, directs, and manages all U.S. quarantine stations, grounds, and anchorages, and sets their boundaries and the officers in charge. This power is limited by title II of the Act of June 15, 1917, as amended. With the President's approval, the Surgeon General can also pick new sites and establish new stations, grounds, and anchorages in the states and U.S. possessions, whenever needed to keep communicable diseases from entering the country. (b) Hours of inspection The Surgeon General sets the hours quarantine service runs at each station. On request, the Surgeon General can make a station operate 24 hours a day, or any part of it, if extra service is needed. The Surgeon General can also limit inspection to daylight hours for vessels that can't be properly inspected in the dark. No vessel has to undergo inspection during darkness unless the quarantine officer decides an immediate inspection is necessary to protect public health. Inspection hours don't have to be the same at every U.S. port. (c) Overtime pay for employees of Service The Surgeon General sets a reasonable overtime rate for Public Health Service, Foreign Quarantine Division employees who do extra duties — including running vessels — connected to inspecting or quarantining people, conveyances, or goods arriving by land, water, or air. This applies when they work between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. (or, at stations with a 7-to-7 workday, between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m.), or on Sundays or holidays. The overtime rate is twice the employee's basic hourly rate for each overtime hour, replacing any other pay rule. "Basic hourly rate" means the regular rate the employee earns during their normal scheduled hours. (d) Payment of extra compensation to United States This extra pay is paid to the United States by the owner, agent, consignee, operator, master, or other person in charge of the conveyance who requested the overtime service. If employees reported for duty as ordered but the service wasn't actually performed for reasons beyond their control, they're still paid as if they'd worked — counted from when they reported until they were told the work wasn't needed, and never less than one hour. The Surgeon General, with the Secretary of Health and Human Services' approval, can require the requesting party to post a bond or deposit money to guarantee payment; this can cover one transaction or many over a set period. No charges apply to inspecting: people arriving by international highway, ferry, bridge, or tunnel, or their conveyances; people arriving by aircraft or train on published schedules, or those aircraft or trains; or people arriving by vessel on published schedules between Canadian ports and Puget Sound, or on the Great Lakes and connecting waterways, or those vessels. Money collected under this subsection goes to the Treasury, credited to the appropriation that covered the expense, and stays available to pay the employees for the work performed.