Consume Usaid chaos as the State Department moves to send homemade employees to home

While Elon Musk’s Doge team continues its efforts to dismantle the main agency of the United States government to distribute foreign aid, their employees abroad are caught in Limbo. The workers of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) are parked in dozens of different countries around the world, but reports from alphabet and CBS news Indicate that most will be imminently summoned to the United States.

Both in the United States and abroad, email and access to the systems of some USAID employees have cut abruptly, which makes it difficult to obtain official information about what could happen next. “Everyone is legitimately concerned about our personnel abroad who essentially are stranded,” said a current USAID employee in the United States to Wired. “We are not sure how we are going to take them home safely.”

Wired has seen internal information that shows that USAID’s leadership tried to compile a list of employees abroad worldwide on Monday. On Tuesday, Pete Marocco, Director of Foreign Assistance recently appointed from the State Department Covered to supervise USAID was convened with the main leaders of the State Department and He instructed them To bring all foreign employees back to the United States, according to CBS News. The media also reported that Marocco said he would evacuate staff with the support of the United States Army if necessary.

On Tuesday afternoon, USAID employees still connected to their email accounts received a notice that the Washington agency headquarters, DC, would remain closed for the rest of the week, according to a copy of the message reviewed by Wired. Some received a Marocco memorandum that indicates that they had been placed on administrative license “until otherwise it was notified.”

USAID did not respond to comments requests. The State Department did not respond to requests for comments.

About 10,000 people Work for USAID, approximately two thirds of which are parked abroad, according to the Research Service of the United States Congress, a non -partisan policy research group serves to Congress (the figure excludes contractors from “support institutional”). The agency has more than 60 regional and countries and represents less than 1 percent of the total federal budget of the United States in general.

Do you have a tip?

Are you a current or previous government worker with information about what is happening? We would like to know about you. Using a workless phone or computer, contact the reporter safely using a personal device on the signal in Kateknibbs.09.

President Donald Trump froze all the foreign help of the United States shortly after taking office last month. Later, his administration clarified that programs that work that come out lives, such as providing medical and food assistance, could receive humanitarian exemptions to continue, but several organizations worldwide say that the process has been plunged into confusion and chaos. Even HIV vital work and AIDS prevention have been hindered, Wired reported on Monday.

Today early, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who took the interim control of USAID on Monday, speculated that if help organizations had misunderstandings, that was a reflection of his incompetence. “If any organization receives funds from the United States and does not know how to apply an exemption, then I have real questions about the competition of that organization,” said Rubio. He added that perhaps some groups were deliberately sabotizing “the process to make” a political point. “

When he was a American senator, Rubio expressed his support repeatedly for some foreign aid programs in the United States. “Foreign aid is not charity,” Said on social networks In 2017. “We must make sure it is well spent, but it is less than 1% of the budget and critic for our national security.”

In 2019, Rubio He said he was working on “Obtain support in Congress for a multilateral humanitarian aid plan so that we can bring food and medicine to the people suffered by Venezuela.” (Florida, where he is blond, is home to a large Venezuelan population).

In general, USAID provided assistance to approximately 130 countries in 2023. The main beneficiaries of help were Ukraine, Ethiopia, Jordan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Nigeria, South Sudan and Syria, according to the research service congressional. .

USAID dismantling is part of a broader “America First” schedule promoted by the new Trump administration that involves retiring from several international organizations and diplomatic efforts. On Tuesday, President Trump signed an executive order withdraw United States of the UN Human Rights Council.