Hundreds of employees working at two federal agencies stand to lose their jobs next month if they decline to move to Kansas City by the end of September.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced controversial plans last year to relocate two United States Department of Agriculture agencies that currently have headquarters in Navy Yard. The National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the Economic Research Service manage scientific grants and research on agriculture and economics, respectively.

In June, the department announced it had chosen Kansas City as the agencies’ new home base and gave workers a mid-July deadline to decide if they would relocate. Only 37 percent agreed to move; the remaining 250 employees turned down the offer. Now, the Washington Post reports that the Agriculture Department is preparing to issue termination notices “sooner than some workers and their supporters expected.”

Some federal lawmakers have been staunchly opposed to the move, and asked USDA to grant employees more time to decide whether they would accept the relocation.

The USDA declined to do so. But in a statement to the Post, it said “we have continuously maintained that employees have until the report date to amend their decision which may include changing from a no to a yes. We are actively working with employees so they can make the decision in a timely manner to ensure they are able to take advantage of all available resources. The mandatory report date for relocating employees in Kansas City is Sept. 30, 2019.”

The Post obtained a draft of the termination letter that said employees would be fired on September 27.

Critics have painted the move to Kansas City as a way to drive federal employees out of the agency. The union that represents both of the agencies, the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3403, has suggested that the move is a “clear attempt to undermine their scientific work” (the agencies have sometimes produced research that have shown negative effects of the Trump administration’s policies.)

“The USDA has provided no rational justification to employees, to Congress, or to its stakeholders for this move, which will make it harder for the agencies to coordinate with other science and research agencies,” AFGE National President J. David Cox said in a statement in June. “We will continue to work with Congress and other parties to fight this wrongheaded proposal, which is little more than a backdoor way to slash the workforce and silence the parts of the agencies’ research that the administration views as inconvenient.”

While the USDA has done a cost-benefit analysis that indicated the relocation would save $300 million over a 15-year period, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney has also explicitly celebrated the move as a means to “drain the swamp.”

“It’s nearly impossible to fire a federal worker. I know that because a lot of them work for me, and I’ve tried,” Mulvaney said in a keynote speech at a Republican gala in South Carolina. “By simply saying to people, ‘You know what, we’re going to take you outside the bubble, outside the Beltway, outside this liberal haven of Washington, D.C., and move you out in the real part of the country,’ and they quit—what a wonderful way to sort of streamline government, and do what we haven’t been able to do for a long time.”

Meanwhile, the Office of the Inspector General released a report this month finding that the relocation may violate the 2018 appropriations bill, which holds that the USDA must get Congressional approval before spending money on the move. The department paid accounting firm Ernst & Young $340,000 without the proper Congressional permission, per the report.

These agencies won’t be the only ones to undergo a relocation out of the District. On July 16, the Department of the Interior notified Congress that it plans to move hundreds of positions in the Bureau of Land Management out west. Only 60 of the approximately 400 employees currently based in D.C. will be left here by the time relocations are finished at the end of 2020.