DHS announces anti-terrorism grant opportunities

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) this week announced the availability of $1.6 billion in grant funding for programs used to help prevent acts of terrorism.

The grant programs provide funding to several categories of entities, including Amtrak, transit owners and operators, and ports.

"The DHS grant programs are flexible by design and will be used to help address evolving threats," said Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in a press release. "They will go toward building and sustaining capabilities across all levels of government and the whole community to maximize preparedness."

Funding opportunities available for fiscal-year 2018 include:
• the Intercity Passenger Rail-Amtrak Program, which provides $10 million to protect critical surface transportation infrastructure and the traveling public from acts of terrorism and increase the resilience of the Amtrak rail system;
• the Port Security Grant Program, which provides $100 million to help protect critical port infrastructure from terrorism, enhance maritime domain awareness, improve port-wide maritime security risk management and maintain or re-establish maritime security mitigation protocols that support port recovery and resiliency capabilities; and
• the Transit Security Grant Program, which provides $88 million to owners and operators of transit systems to protect critical surface transportation and the traveling public from acts of terrorism and to increase the resilience of transit infrastructure.

All preparedness notices of funding opportunities can be found here. Final submissions must be made through the Non-Disaster Grants system, which can be accessed here.