DHS shutdown impacts FEMA disaster response capabilities, expert warns

Exclusive: A partial government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security could have a critical impact on local disaster response without help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a public safety expert warned.

In an interview with Fox News Digital, Jeffrey Halstead, strategic account director at Genasys, a company that provides communications hardware and software to help communities during disasters, said the DHS shutdown could impact emergency response and recovery efforts now that Support the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). He was tied up.

“Every time the government goes into one of these shutdowns, there is a distinct part of the federal government that is affected, either by reviewing a grant program or distributing funds from previously awarded grant programs. And that is exactly the domain of DHS as well as FEMA influencing emergency managers, emergency response and recovery of various cities, counties and regions in the event that they experience weather and/or a disaster-related event,” Halstead said.

Halstead, also a retired police chief in Fort Worth, Texas, with more than 30 years in law enforcement, explained that government shutdowns that delay federal funds “significantly impact” local disaster response.

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The Trump administration has ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to suspend the deployment of hundreds of relief workers to disaster-torn areas across the country during the Department of Homeland Security shutdown. (Al Drago/Getty Images)

“I know personally that I was in Arizona for over 21 years, in Texas as a police chief for over seven years, and then I was in Nevada for a long time, and I worked directly with a few states in the western United States,” he said.

“The recent government shutdown has largely ended the grant application process, meaning grants will not be approved, will not even be allocated and/or funds will not be released,” he continued. “This greatly impacts their ability to plan and coordinate a lot of the planned response events. In Arizona, the Central UASI District or the Urban Area Security Initiative, none of their grants have been reviewed, which replaces outdated equipment, vehicles and training funds so they can meet the standards every quarter and then be ready if something happens.”

This comes in implementation of the Trump administration’s order FEMA to suspend publication Hundreds of relief workers are heading to disaster-torn areas across the country during the Department of Homeland Security shutdown.

More than 300 FEMA disaster responders were preparing for upcoming missions, but were asked to halt their travel plans. Grant systems also are not fully operational until lawmakers can reach an agreement to fund the department.

“The biggest impact is funding, getting grants distributed and then aligning all that equipment and training so they can have a very successful year preparing for disaster,” Halstead said.

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More than 300 FEMA disaster responders were preparing for upcoming missions, but were asked to halt their travel plans. (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

“If there is a severe weather event, a serious accident, or anything that requires the support of FEMA, agency personnel, or agency resources, those may not be available,” he added. “This greatly impacts city, county, state and federal collaboration efforts that are immediately engaged, aligned and deploying resources, sometimes within 12 hours. So this significantly hampers their ability to plan effectively in the event of a critical event, disaster event or weather-related event. They will not have all of these federal assets and resources that they have come to rely on and rely on and work with in both planning as well as training events or previous disasters where they have responded and provided support.”

As part of the move to end FEMA deployments, employees currently working on major recovery efforts will remain at the sites and will not be able to return home unless their assignment ends, but no new employees can join them or be relieved without DHS approval.

Recovery efforts are still ongoing in places such as North CarolinaHurricane Helen devastated the area in the fall of 2024.

As Halstead noted, the recovery efforts are “the last part of the emergency management cycle to return to normalcy in that area.”

“When that is impacted significantly, you still see some areas in North Carolina two years later still struggling in the recovery phase,” he said. “This is directly related to all of this procrastination and delay in FEMA funding and the financial support needed to complete the recovery phase.”

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FEMA employees working on major recovery efforts will remain at the sites and cannot return home unless their assignment ends, but no new employees can join them or be relieved without DHS approval. (Kevin Deitch/Getty Images)

Asked about the importance of federal funding given recent severe weather across the United States such as snow on the East Coast, flooding in California and fire disasters in the high plains that have prompted evacuations, Halstead said it was “extremely critical” and that a delay in funds could impact the safety of local residents.

“It is extremely important for emergency managers and fire departments, as well as law enforcement, to leverage not only these partnerships and resources, but also funding allocations so that they can effectively plan the response and operational control of a disaster, and then enter recovery mode…and at times, these delays will impact the safety and well-being of Americans,” Halstead explained.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress have yet to reach an agreement to end the partial shutdown, largely because Democrats have demanded tougher oversight and reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the wake of the shooting deaths of two US citizens last month by federal agents in Minneapolis, something the GOP has so far resisted.

President Donald Trump He argued earlier this week It is “a shut-down for Democrats” and “has nothing to do with Republicans.”

Halstead said he would like lawmakers on Capitol Hill to negotiate in good faith to end the shutdown so that first responders have “an effective means to do our jobs safely and very efficiently.”

Recovery efforts are still ongoing in places like North Carolina, where Hurricane Helen devastated the region in the fall of 2024. (Travis Long/The News & Observer/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

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“I know a lot of people are really upset that they are taking advantage of an important political issue through a co-financing agreement that should have been approved very quickly,” he said. “This has happened a lot in the last two or three years. We’ve seen shutdown after shutdown after shutdown. What a lot of citizens don’t realize is that when government is shut down, all that work — grant reviews, proposals, funding, disbursement — all of that gets delayed. Then there’s a huge delay in getting back to open government.”

“They’re still negotiating all of these topics that are very politically sensitive and really divisive not just on Capitol Hill, but really in our country,” Halstead added. “And then all of this backlog is now taking longer to get approved, funded, and get the money distributed. So that has a ripple effect on all of our emergency managers and our first responders to do their jobs effectively.”

Halstead stressed that an agreement to reach a shutdown was unlikely before Trump’s State of the Union address next week, in which the president confirmed he would deliver the speech regardless, and that ongoing delays in funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency could continue for weeks.

“It may take at least another couple of weeks until we can fund this and reopen it,” Halstead said. “But then we still have this large backlog. It will take a significant amount of time.”