The Immigration Department has handed its senior executives a pay rise worth up to $6400 a year.

While the department languishes under an expired pay deal, 186 members of the Immigration’s “senior executive service” have been given a 2 per cent pay rise by departmental secretary Mike Pezzullo.

The bonus came a matter of hours after over 10,000 of the department’s public servants voted to reject a proposed new deal.

The new deal will mean an extra $6400 a year to level 3 executives, taking their pay to more than $326,400 per year.

DIPB has spent over $47 million on senior management remuneration in 2015-2016, including salaries, vehicles, redundancies, superannuation and other benefits.

Mr Pezzullo and Border Force Commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg’s salaries ($605,000 and $731,000 respectively) are set by the Remuneration Tribunal, and so will not be included in the new round of pay rises.

The rejection of the proposed pay deal for the department's 13,300 rank-and-file public servants moves their dispute a period of uncertainty.

The parties will enter compulsory arbitration at the Fair Work Commission, something the 97,000 public servants from a total workforce of about 150,000 that still do not have new enterprise agreements in place.

CPSU national secretary Nadine Flood called it a “slap in the face”.

“This is yet another slap in the face to the frontline Immigration and Border Force staff working to combat terrorism and organised crime,” she said.

“How can the department possibly justify giving a no-strings-attached pay rise to its highest paid executives while most frontline staff have their pay frozen and some even face pay cuts?”