NewNow you can listen to Fox News articles!
Exclusive: A public safety expert has warned that a partial government shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security could have a severe impact on local disaster response without assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Jeffrey Halstead, director of strategic accounts at Genesis, a provider of communications hardware and software to help communities during disasters, said the DHS shutdown could impact emergency response and recovery efforts now that FEMA support has been restricted.
“Each time the government enters into one of these shutdowns, a specific part of the federal government is affected, both reviewing the grant program or distributing funds from pre-awarded grant programs. It’s really the area of DHS as well as FEMA that impacts emergency managers, emergency response and recovery of various cities, counties and regions if they experience a weather and/or disaster-related event,” Halstead said.
Halsted, also a retired police chief in Fort Worth, Texas, who has more than 30 years of experience in law enforcement, noted that the government shutdown causes delays in federal funds, which has a “significant impact” on local responses to disasters.
Ice shutdown fight could limit FEMA, Coast Guard access to ‘life-threatening’ emergencies
The Trump administration ordered FEMA to suspend the deployment of hundreds of aid workers to disaster-stricken areas across the country during the DHS shutdown. (Al Drago/Getty Images)
“I know personally, I lived in Arizona for over 21 years, served as police chief in Texas for over seven years, and then I lived in Nevada for a long time, and I worked directly with some states in the western United States,” he said.
He added, “The last government shutdown significantly disrupted their grant application process, meaning grants will not be approved, allocated, and/or funds will not be released.” “This significantly impacts their ability to plan and coordinate their planned response programs. In Arizona, in the central UASI region or the Urban Area Security Initiative, none of their grants are being reviewed, which replace older equipment, vehicles and fund training so that every quarter they can meet standards and then be prepared if something happens.”
This came as the Trump administration ordered FEMA to suspend the deployment of hundreds of aid workers to disaster-stricken areas across the country during the DHS shutdown.
More than 300 FEMA disaster responders were preparing for upcoming operations, but were told to put their travel plans on hold. Grant systems also do not become fully operational until lawmakers reach an agreement to fund the department.
“The biggest impact is the funding, the grants that are distributed and then organizing all of that equipment and training so that they can really have a very successful year getting ready for a disaster,” Halstead said.
DHS shutdown explained: Who works without pay, what happens to airports and disaster response
More than 300 FEMA disaster responders were preparing for upcoming operations, but were told to put their travel plans on hold. (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
“Should there be a catastrophic weather event, severe event or something that would require FEMA support, FEMA staff or FEMA resources may not be available,” he said. “This has a huge impact on city, county, state and federal collaborative efforts that have to be engaged, aligned and deployed resources virtually immediately, sometimes within 12 hours. So it disrupts their ability to plan effectively should a critical incident, disaster event, or weather-related event come their way. They won’t have all these federal assets and resources on which to draw for their planning as well as training events or previous disasters where they’ve responded and assisted.” Had provided, depended on, trusted and worked.
As part of the move to end FEMA deployments, personnel currently working on major recovery efforts will remain at sites and may not return home until their assignments end, but no new personnel may join or relieve them without DHS approval.
Recovery efforts are still underway in places like North Carolina, where Hurricane Helene devastated the region in late 2024.
As Halstead said, the recovery effort is “the final phase of the emergency management cycle to bring normalcy back to that area.”
“Even when it’s dramatically impacted, you still see some areas of North Carolina struggling to get through the recovery phase even a few years later,” he said. “This is directly related to all of these disruptions and delays in FEMA, FEMA funding, and the financial assistance needed to complete the recovery phase.”
Partial government shutdown continues as DHS funding talks stall.
FEMA personnel working on major recovery efforts will remain at sites and may not return home until their assignments are completed, but no new personnel may join or relieve them without DHS approval. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Asked about the importance of federal funding given recent severe weather across the US such as snowstorms on the East Coast, floods in California and wildfires in the High Plains that have forced evacuations, Halstead said it is “extremely important” and that delaying funding could impact the safety of local residents.
“It’s extremely important for emergency managers, your fire departments as well as law enforcement to not only utilize these partnerships and resources, but utilize funding allocations so that they can plan effectively to respond, take operational control of the disaster and then get into recovery mode… then sometimes this delay, it’s going to 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 of Democrats’ demands for tighter surveillance and reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) following the fatal shooting of two American citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis last month, which the GOP has so far resisted.
President Donald Trump argued earlier this week that this is a “Democrat shutdown” and that “this has nothing to do with Republicans.”
Halstead said he would like Capitol Hill lawmakers to negotiate in good faith to end the shutdown so that first responders have “effective tools to do our job safely and very, very efficiently.”
Recovery efforts are still underway in places like North Carolina, where Hurricane Helene devastated the region in late 2024. (Travis Long/The News & Observer/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Click here to download Fox News App
“I know a lot of people are really upset because they leveraged an important political issue over a common funding agreement that should have been approved much sooner,” he said. “That’s happened a lot in the last two to three years. We’ve seen shutdown after shutdown. What a lot of citizens don’t realize is that when the government shuts down, all of this work — grant reviews, proposals, funding, disbursements — all of that gets delayed. Then there’s a lot of delay in getting back to an open government.”
“They’re still having conversations about all these extremely politically sensitive topics that are divisive not only on Capitol Hill, but really within our country,” Halstead said. “Then all of that backlog is now taking even longer to get approved, funded, and funds distributed. So it’s having a compounding impact on all of our emergency managers and our first responders to do their jobs effectively.”
Halstead highlighted that no agreement is likely to be reached on a shutdown before Trump’s State of the Union address next week, in which the president confirmed he will deliver a speech regardless, and that ongoing delays in FEMA funding could last for weeks.
“It’s going to take us at least two more weeks to get it funded and back open,” Halstead said. “But yet we still have these significant backlogs. It’s going to take a lot of time.”
