Current and former US Agency for International Development personnel, speaking anonymously for fear of retaliation, slammed the Trump administration’s downsizing of the aid agency, claiming it has left important partners in the dark and much of its workforce in limbo abroad.
In addition to the humanitarian work that has been halted, scores of career USAID personnel living abroad are experiencing life-altering circumstances. Several officials were tearful as they described their current positions and uncertainties.
All USAID humanitarian activity around the world has practically ceased, according to current and former officials, despite the State Department’s claim that there are waivers for life-saving projects.
“Right now, there is no USAID humanitarian assistance happening,” claimed a current USAID humanitarian division official. “There are waivers put in place by Secretary Rubio for emergency food assistance and a number of other sectors, but they are a fraud and a sham and intended to give the illusion of continuity, which is untrue.”
The official also attacked the waiver, calling it confusing and mainly ineffective because staff had been furloughed when Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency took control of the agency.
“There is no staff left anymore to actually process waiver requests or to move money or to make awards or to do anything,” according to one official. “We’ve ceased to exist.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio pushed back on nongovernmental organizations on Tuesday, claiming that despite the waiver, aid programs remained suspended.
“I issued a blanket waiver that said if this is lifesaving programs, OK — if it’s providing food or medicine or anything that is saving lives and is immediate and urgent, you’re not included in the freeze,” according to him. “I am not sure how much clearer we can be than that.
“And I would say if some organization is receiving funds from the United States and does not know how to apply a waiver, then I have real questions about the competence of that organization, or I wonder whether they’re deliberately sabotaging it for purposes of making a political point,” he said.
However, the same USAID official pushed back, claiming that such sectors are “actually unable to access their lines of credit here in Washington, D.C., for money already obligated to, already contractually put forward by the U.S. government.”
“And this is meaning [a] lack of provision of assistance,” the official stated. “This means staff layoffs, which means complete chaos and mayhem. Some may have enough money to keep going for a short time, but not for long.”
Another former official, who met with multiple USAID humanitarian partner organizations, stated, “Not one has received any funding since the stop-work order to continue work, even if that work is theoretically allowed to continue.”
A current USAID official based in Asia is pregnant.
She burst into tears throughout the call, expressing that she has no idea what will happen to her family and is concerned that the administration will “abandon” her overseas or in the United States.
“I am one of more than a dozen American families who are either undergoing or planning obstetric medevac to deliver their babies. We have a nursery painted with a cot ready for our baby, which we conceived after three years of fertility treatments,” said the Asia-based official, her voice cracking with emotion. “Instead of nesting and preparing for their arrival, we are worried whether Secretary Rubio and President Trump would desert us overseas or when we arrive on American soil. We have been advised that there is no money to assist USAID families awaiting the delivery of their infants with relocation in the United States.
“We have been using refugee resources from our churches and community groups that we usually use to help refugees from places like Syria and Afghanistan,” according to the official. “We’re using these resources to find out how to land as near to our feet as feasible. Unless public opinion changes, everyone of these families will be homeless, jobless, and without insurance within days, if not hours, of arriving on American land.”
The spouse of a current Latin American official stated that their family does not have a home to return to in the United States.
“My spouse served in a war zone. We have school-aged children that confront regular issues in the United States, but without the resources, that we’ve had to manage, and we’ve been willing to go wherever is best for the organization,” one official added.
“We worked across administrations with programs changing, growing, shrinking, and it’s a circumstance right now where we literally have focused our life on this USAID mission, and we do not have a home to go back to, which is quite typical of Foreign Service families, and we don’t know how we’re supposed to pick up and just leave,” the representative explained.
“How do you leave when you have not just family, not just school-age kids — you have pets, you have things, you don’t have a home to go back to, and you have a mission that you believe in and that you’ve supported for decades?” remarked a government official. “And it’s just the rug pulled under you.”
