Trump administration removes nearly all USAID workers worldwide

The Trump administration has said that it is pulling almost all US Agency for International Development workers off the job and out of the field worldwide, ending the agency's six-decade mission overseas that fought starvation, funded education and worked to end epidemics.

The administration notified USAID workers on Tuesday in emails and a notice posted online, the latest in a steady dismantling of the aid agency by returning political appointees from President Donald Trump's first term and billionaire Elon Musk's government-efficiency teams who call much of the spending on programmes overseas wasteful.

The order takes effect just before midnight on Friday and gives direct hires of the agency overseas — many of whom have been frantically packing up households in expectation of layoffs — 30 days to return home unless they are deemed essential. Contractors not determined to be essential also would be fired, the notice said.

The move had been rumoured for several days and was the most extreme of several proposals considered for consolidating the agency into the State Department. Other options included closures of smaller USAID missions and partial closures of larger ones.

Thousands of USAID employees already had been laid off and programs worldwide shut down after Trump imposed a sweeping freeze on foreign assistance.

Despite outcry from Democratic lawmakers, the aid agency has been a special target as the new administration and Musk’s budget-slashing Department of Government Efficiency look to shrink the federal government.

They have ordered a spending stop that has paralysed US-funded aid and development work around the world, gutted the senior leadership and workforce with furloughs and firings, and closed Washington headquarters to staffers on Monday. Lawmakers said the agency’s computer servers were carted away.

“Spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk boasted on X.

Mass removal

The mass removal of thousands of staffers overseas and in Washington would doom billions of dollars in projects in some 120 countries, including security assistance to partners such as Ukraine as well as development work for clean water, job training and education, including for schoolgirls under Taliban rule in Afghanistan.

The US is the world’s largest humanitarian donor by far. It spends less than 1 percent of its budget on foreign assistance, a smaller share of its budget than some countries.

Health programmes like those credited with helping end polio and smallpox epidemics already have stopped. So have monitoring and deployments of rapid-response teams for contagious diseases such as an Ebola outbreak in Uganda.

Hundreds of millions of dollars of food and medication already delivered by US companies are sitting in ports because of the administration's sudden shutdown of the agency.

Democratic lawmakers and others say the USAID is enshrined in legislation as an independent agency, and cannot be shut down without congressional approval.

Supporters of USAID from both political parties say its work overseas is essential to countering the influence of Russia, China and other adversaries and rivals abroad, and to cementing alliances and partnerships.

The decision to withdraw direct-hire staff and their families earlier than their planned departures will likely cost the government tens of millions of dollars in travel and relocation costs.

Staff being placed on leave include both foreign and civil service officers who have legal protection against arbitrary dismissal and being placed on leave without reason.

The American Foreign Service Association, the union which represents US diplomats, sent a notice to its members denouncing the decision and saying it was preparing legal action to counter or halt it.

Locally employed USAID staff, however, do not have much recourse and were excluded from the federal government’s voluntary buyout offer.