The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been weakened under President Donald Trump by staff cuts and an “unprecedented” use of FEMA employees for border security, House Democrats said in a report released Friday.
The report, led by Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.) — ranking member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management — calls FEMA “a smaller, less trained and hamstrung agency that has been hollowed out while disasters become more frequent and severe.”
The document cites “a diversion of FEMA resources to immigration enforcement” and a decline in FEMA’s workforce to 21,000 in April from 26,000 in February 2025.
“This report is damning,” Stanton said in a statement accompanying his report. “After the Trump administration hollowed out a third of FEMA’s workforce, it put disaster professionals to work as the ‘operational backbone’ of its cruel mass deportation agenda, likely in violation of federal law.”
