'Americans Can and Will Die from This': USAID Employee Describes Perils, Turmoil
The abrupt blame placed on the formerly bipartisan agency has left front-line workers in overseas locations feeling shocked and forsaken, devoid of any connections in Washington.
TroibNews 
A month ago, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was not widely recognized by many Americans. However, that changed when Elon Musk, alongside President Donald Trump to a lesser extent, targeted the agency, seeking to dismantle it as part of a cost-cutting initiative and to eliminate perceived liberal influences within its workforce.
This move predictably led to significant turmoil in Washington. The shutdown bewildered USAID employees, outraged Democrats, and led Republicans, who had previously called for increased support for the agency, to abandon their prior stances in favor of Musk and Trump's directives.
My focus has been on the implications of the attack on USAID for U.S. interests abroad. While the agency is crucial for delivering humanitarian aid, it has also been favored by many Republicans due to its role in reinforcing American strength and influence in nations with shifting allegiances.
Few understand this better than a seasoned USAID employee, known to me for over two decades, who is currently serving overseas. To protect their identity, I am withholding their name and specific details.
In journalism, it's common practice to include, "who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals." This employee is aware of the potential for retaliation from the government and harassment from those who may target a committed aid worker. However, what concerns them more is the risk faced by non-American partners associated with USAID if their work becomes public.
This situation does not negate the importance of discussing the federal government's role in foreign aid or other areas. Many of Trump’s supporters are keen on dismantling an entrenched bureaucracy they see as antagonistic, despite the fact that the president himself may not be committed to a broader ideological vision aimed at reducing the scope of government. Meanwhile, far from the political maneuvering in Washington, the realities of America's global role are far more serious.
It's crucial for leaders in both parties to grasp what the past 10 days have meant for USAID employees and how the reckless dismantling of the agency could undermine U.S. relationships around the globe.
---
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
**You said something when we first talked about this that stuck with me — that you feel personally abandoned by America.**
Yes.
**Why do you feel that way?**
I have spent my entire career doing a thing that I think is important for America. And I’ve done that in places that no American wants to be, at times where no American wants to be there. I’ve been without my family. I’ve been next to suicide attacks. I’ve been the target of an Al-Qaeda plot to kidnap me. And throughout all of this, I felt that my sacrifices meant something.
What I found in the last two weeks is, not only do those sacrifices not matter, but that we’re vilified without any evidence or reason for that. They have made this process as painful as they can as retribution for that. And for me, that is the biggest issue. I have colleagues in Washington, D.C. who don’t have any access to anything. They’re trying their best to get us back to America. But they have no answers. Absolutely nothing. And that to me, is a really sad way to end what I would’ve said was an important career.
**Let’s back up for a minute. Tell me about the last few days. Trump is sworn in January 20. When do you realize something is amiss?**
The first example is his first executive order. The pause on foreign assistance, which I think he did the day of his inauguration, if not the next day, where he said we’re pausing all foreign assistance for 90 days. From a humanitarian and development and stabilization perspective, we know what that means. It means people are dying. We assumed at the time the pause would come with some sort of waiver, because there was very clear guidance in that EO that there would be certain conditions that if met, would mean that programming could continue. I thought, well, it’s a bureaucratic hurdle, but again, I am prepared as a U.S. government official to follow the administration and the policies they have. If we need to do these hurdles, we’ll do these hurdles. But once we realized they were giving stop work orders to absolutely all implementing partners that were doing this work, and that there was no waiver process — this entire idea that there was going to be a process whereby we could ask for waivers to do our programming didn’t exist. That’s when me and my colleagues and people around me started to think, huh, maybe this is more sinister than we ever imagined.
**Take me through the last couple of days, when things have really accelerated.**
Yeah, I’m not exaggerating when I say, every night when I go to bed I say, OK, well, this situation has to plateau. It can’t get worse. It’s very clear to all of us that have seen this that the entire intent behind the way this has been done is to create as much confusion and create as much trauma to the federal service as they can. And honestly, they’ve been really, really fucking effective at it. For me, we figured out last week that the waivers were bullshit.
My program is a lifesaving program. I save people’s lives daily. I save children’s lives. And I can’t really talk about what I do for the safety of my partners. But I can tell you, without a doubt, it is lifesaving. When we said, there are certain activities that we do, if we stop, right here, and there’s no more money sent, that has real, grave dangers to the partners we work with and the communities that we support, we got silence. No response back. I think that’s when we start realizing that OK, this is not a pause. This is something else.
**And is there any actual review of the agency’s activities going on?**
Yes, they start talking about, "There’s this review process. We’re going to have a process."
I will tell you, I could spend hours on what makes America stronger, what makes America prosperous, what makes America safer. I could tell you the answers to those questions inside and out from my program, because my program has real, national security implications. I wrote them in language we can take to the Hill, more simple language. We did it with diagrams. We did it with personal impact stories.
No one’s asking us! No one’s asking us anything. And while they’re not asking us, every night, we’re getting an email decapitating us more. Our leadership has been put on administrative leave for insubordination that no one can pinpoint. Our systems are being shut off. We are being vilified by Musk Twitter for being criminals. Every day you wake up to some onslaught of horrors, which all culminated with the decision to close all missions worldwide.
**And one thing that I think is really important to say: The people I work with really are civil servants. They genuinely, to their core, believe in the mission of what we’re doing. I do not have one person, one colleague, that said a bad thing about Trump’s foreign policy before the election. We’re under the Hatch Act. We can’t even talk about who we voted for. People take that very seriously. We take that oath very seriously. We respect the orders of the administration in power. It wasn’t until yesterday that my mission director turned to me and said it is very clear that this whole fucking thing [about a review] has been bullshit and we’re done.**
**Hold on. "Done" meaning, the idea of a review, of an examination of activities, is B.S.?**
This charade that we were going to have a pause, and then there were exemptions for life-saving work, and then there was the review where each dollar by dollar, look at the effects of this programming — which by the way, USAID people welcome that kind of evidence-based programming. We would welcome that. You didn’t need to cut off the paths to the communities we support around the world, to endanger our staff, to endanger our partners. People really, really wanted to show their commitment to being bipartisan and following the directive of this administration. It was only in the last two, three days, where everyone has realized — this whole thing is a sham.
**It’s a sham because they don’t want to review, they just want to shut down USAID?**
Exactly. There is no review. There is still no process. We are on day 14 or how many days it’s been, we have still not received one piece of guidance of how our programming will be reviewed. Not one response to, "Yes, I would like a briefing on what you’re doing." Instead, they’ve shut off our systems and are sending us home.
**And the thing is, that’s fine — well, it’s not fine. It’s illegal. But I put the most blame honestly on — and I’m sure [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio is completely incapacitated and scared to death of the DOGE boys. But to sit there on media and say it’s because we’re insubordinate that they’re making these actions, that is why I feel abandoned. It’s not that this president has decided that USAID shouldn’t exist. That’s ridiculous, but fine. But don’t sit there and slander the work I have done for you and the government for 15 years, especially when you believed in this work up until you were appointed — and tell the American people it’s because of something we’ve done wrong. That to me is why I feel abandoned.**
**It sounds like, in some ways, you’re angrier at Rubio than you are at Trump.**
I am. He knows better. He knows our work. He has seen it. He has respected it. All these Stephen Miller arguments, they’re all crazy liberals — are there a lot of Democrats in USAID? Absolutely. But at the end of the day, we honor humanitarian principles. The entire essence of what we do is nonpartisan.
When [Rubio] was selected Secretary of State, I thought, great. Maybe this isn't who I would've chosen, but a real, serious human being who has values and convictions. Maybe he’s just too scared? To me, that’s not a good enough answer.
**Talk to me for a minute about the hard and soft power elements of USAID. You’re in a difficult neighborhood and you’re trying to make friends for the U.S., it sounds like.**
I need to be really careful. I don’t want to even say the country, because that will be pinpointed. Let’s just say, there are authoritarian powers throughout the world that are cozying up more by the day to China and Russia. And we have longstanding partners who have believed in the values that Americans believe in. Democracy, human rights, respect for the rule of law.
We put these people in danger every day by working with us in countries where even an association of their name whispered with USAID could get them killed. And then we turn around and say, "Oh, sorry." Wait, we don’t even say we’re sorry, because we’ve been put under a gag order. I can’t even talk to my partners. I can’t even say, "Hey I’m really sorry to have totally fucked you over and your life."
That trauma will reap generations of resentment toward America. And I have to say, having worked in [another global hot spot], people don’t believe in the American values of democracy because they haven’t seen them. And let me say, China comes in and they give us a road and they tell us about America hypocrisy. Well, now we do look like hypocrites. And you can only look for a hypocrite in so many places for so long before you lose your ability to wield soft power. We have completely lost that.
**What have you heard from, without talking about names or what they do, what have you heard from folks on the ground who you work with, about America? What have they been saying to you the last couple of days?**
They cannot believe what happened. I will say again, the issue I work on is bipartisan. The biggest supporters of the work I’ve done have been [Senators Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham], and other pretty hawkish Republican senators who have consistently asked us to do more. "Why aren’t you doing more? More, more, more, more." And so I had been telling my partners, even after the election: Do not worry. This is a bipartisan issue.
**I’m not doing climate change. I’m not doing DEI. I’m not even feeding babies. I’m doing something that everyone — I’ve never once had a senator say, "Hey, hey, hey, you shouldn’t be doing that." If anything, they say, "Can you do more of that?"**
**And when you say more, what do you mean by more? More of what?**
I work on a program that essentially allows us to provide nonlethal assistance to [a group]. So when I say I’m doing X, Y and Z, I have people like McConnell saying: Why can’t you do more? Can’t you give them this? Why can't you give them that? I do want to draw the line, because the other weird DOGE bro line is that we’re somehow CIA. We are not. We have very, very strict statutory authority when it comes to what we can and cannot do. Our lawyers take that very, very, very seriously.
**Can you say anything, and without mentioning the country, but nonlethal aid: What are we talking about?**
Things that will help [a group] around their mission. Technical assistance, equipment that is non-lethal. How can you help a movement?
**So what are your latest instructions?**
I got up at 5 a.m. to read an ABC article to say I’m being sent back [to the U.S.] Saturday.
Every morning for the last week I’ve woken up to some piece of shitty news about the situation. This morning was that we were going to be evacuated. We talked to our colleagues, and it’s clear they’ve received no guidance from Washington. And I want to pinpoint: This is the tactic. When our leadership was cut off for insubordination or not following the "spirit" of the executive orders, we lost touch with Washington. No leadership combined with them being off the systems, we have missions and embassies that literally have no contact with Washington in terms of what we’re doing, what foreign policies we’re enacting, how we’re spending money, how we’re keeping our staff and partners safe. Nothing. I was in a mission meeting last week where the mission director said, "We have lost contact with Washington. We are on our own." I can tell you, in my entire career in government, have never seen such a thing. Not during Covid, not during crisis, not during civil war. Never.
**Right, because if you lose access to Washington, the work that you do, that’s everything.**
Everything I do I send to Washington. And then Washington sends it to relevant interagency colleagues. The kind of interagency collaboration that goes between me talking to a partner who tells me a story about something terrible that has happened to them and how that gets to the NSC, is a very, very laborious process.
**What would happen if you or one of your colleagues was kidnapped in the next day or two?**
If my colleagues were kidnapped in the next day or two, they don't even have the help button on their phone. If I had a colleague that was in West Africa and had someone from ISIS go and take them, they couldn’t even let the [Regional Security Office] know that they’ve been taken. Americans can and will die from this. And that to me, I don’t care what kind of weird power struggle you have or what your political ideology is, the fact that you are willing — or you are just so stupid that they don’t realize that cutting off these systems, you’re putting people in dangerous situations. There’s nothing. There’s no access. You can’t talk to the embassy. You can’t do anything.
**Are you planning on coming home Saturday now?**
No. The other thing I would say — there’s no articulation from Washington — some missions are preparing. And that’s the thing that is both the most heartbreaking and the most frustrating thing, these civil servants are still listening to the orders they’re getting. Even though they are insane. Even though they are putting their families at risk. At the end of the day, no one knows where we’re going. No one knows how long we’ll be paid. They talk about an exemption where we’re allowed to stay until the end of the year if we have school kids.
But the waivers and the program documents review process — I don’t think we’ll ever see that. There is literally no plan in place, and so it’s absolute chaos. So for me personally, I’m not going anywhere on Saturday. Enough is enough. You can treat me like this for so long, but I’m not going to subject my family to that treatment.
**Are you getting paid still?**
I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m being paid. I don’t know if I’m on leave. I don’t know if I’m being terminated. We know nothing. There’s no access. They’ve turned off the tap.
**What questions have you gotten from anyone in authority?**
You mean from the administration? Literally zero. The only question I’ve gotten in the last few weeks is: "How many family members do you have?" And I got that last night, assuming so they could get me on a plane. They have not asked one thing about my program or the work that my team does. They haven’t asked questions about anyone in my office.
**Lastly, you’ve talked to some of your colleagues there. I’m sure you’re talking to some in other countries. What’s the sense from other USAID workers?**
Shock and devastation. I have never seen my colleagues look this way. And we have lost people. I’ve had multiple colleagues die in terrible events. We are not a soft bunch of people when it comes to emotions.
But to look at our partners and say, well, I don’t know what to tell you. America is not coming back. You guys aren’t going to get any more help. If anything, we put you in grave danger by supporting you for this long only to abandon you at the end.
I’ll get over this. I’ll get another job and I’ll get my family somewhere. But there’s a deep trauma that comes with believing that you are representing the best of what your country has to offer, and then to realize, and then someone is making you a scapegoat for some bigger political, maniacal agenda. That is something that will take all of us for a long time to contend with.
Ben Johansen contributed to this report.
Camille Lefevre contributed to this report for TROIB News
This move predictably led to significant turmoil in Washington. The shutdown bewildered USAID employees, outraged Democrats, and led Republicans, who had previously called for increased support for the agency, to abandon their prior stances in favor of Musk and Trump's directives.
My focus has been on the implications of the attack on USAID for U.S. interests abroad. While the agency is crucial for delivering humanitarian aid, it has also been favored by many Republicans due to its role in reinforcing American strength and influence in nations with shifting allegiances.
Few understand this better than a seasoned USAID employee, known to me for over two decades, who is currently serving overseas. To protect their identity, I am withholding their name and specific details.
In journalism, it's common practice to include, "who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals." This employee is aware of the potential for retaliation from the government and harassment from those who may target a committed aid worker. However, what concerns them more is the risk faced by non-American partners associated with USAID if their work becomes public.
This situation does not negate the importance of discussing the federal government's role in foreign aid or other areas. Many of Trump’s supporters are keen on dismantling an entrenched bureaucracy they see as antagonistic, despite the fact that the president himself may not be committed to a broader ideological vision aimed at reducing the scope of government. Meanwhile, far from the political maneuvering in Washington, the realities of America's global role are far more serious.
It's crucial for leaders in both parties to grasp what the past 10 days have meant for USAID employees and how the reckless dismantling of the agency could undermine U.S. relationships around the globe.
---
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
**You said something when we first talked about this that stuck with me — that you feel personally abandoned by America.**
Yes.
**Why do you feel that way?**
I have spent my entire career doing a thing that I think is important for America. And I’ve done that in places that no American wants to be, at times where no American wants to be there. I’ve been without my family. I’ve been next to suicide attacks. I’ve been the target of an Al-Qaeda plot to kidnap me. And throughout all of this, I felt that my sacrifices meant something.
What I found in the last two weeks is, not only do those sacrifices not matter, but that we’re vilified without any evidence or reason for that. They have made this process as painful as they can as retribution for that. And for me, that is the biggest issue. I have colleagues in Washington, D.C. who don’t have any access to anything. They’re trying their best to get us back to America. But they have no answers. Absolutely nothing. And that to me, is a really sad way to end what I would’ve said was an important career.
**Let’s back up for a minute. Tell me about the last few days. Trump is sworn in January 20. When do you realize something is amiss?**
The first example is his first executive order. The pause on foreign assistance, which I think he did the day of his inauguration, if not the next day, where he said we’re pausing all foreign assistance for 90 days. From a humanitarian and development and stabilization perspective, we know what that means. It means people are dying. We assumed at the time the pause would come with some sort of waiver, because there was very clear guidance in that EO that there would be certain conditions that if met, would mean that programming could continue. I thought, well, it’s a bureaucratic hurdle, but again, I am prepared as a U.S. government official to follow the administration and the policies they have. If we need to do these hurdles, we’ll do these hurdles. But once we realized they were giving stop work orders to absolutely all implementing partners that were doing this work, and that there was no waiver process — this entire idea that there was going to be a process whereby we could ask for waivers to do our programming didn’t exist. That’s when me and my colleagues and people around me started to think, huh, maybe this is more sinister than we ever imagined.
**Take me through the last couple of days, when things have really accelerated.**
Yeah, I’m not exaggerating when I say, every night when I go to bed I say, OK, well, this situation has to plateau. It can’t get worse. It’s very clear to all of us that have seen this that the entire intent behind the way this has been done is to create as much confusion and create as much trauma to the federal service as they can. And honestly, they’ve been really, really fucking effective at it. For me, we figured out last week that the waivers were bullshit.
My program is a lifesaving program. I save people’s lives daily. I save children’s lives. And I can’t really talk about what I do for the safety of my partners. But I can tell you, without a doubt, it is lifesaving. When we said, there are certain activities that we do, if we stop, right here, and there’s no more money sent, that has real, grave dangers to the partners we work with and the communities that we support, we got silence. No response back. I think that’s when we start realizing that OK, this is not a pause. This is something else.
**And is there any actual review of the agency’s activities going on?**
Yes, they start talking about, "There’s this review process. We’re going to have a process."
I will tell you, I could spend hours on what makes America stronger, what makes America prosperous, what makes America safer. I could tell you the answers to those questions inside and out from my program, because my program has real, national security implications. I wrote them in language we can take to the Hill, more simple language. We did it with diagrams. We did it with personal impact stories.
No one’s asking us! No one’s asking us anything. And while they’re not asking us, every night, we’re getting an email decapitating us more. Our leadership has been put on administrative leave for insubordination that no one can pinpoint. Our systems are being shut off. We are being vilified by Musk Twitter for being criminals. Every day you wake up to some onslaught of horrors, which all culminated with the decision to close all missions worldwide.
**And one thing that I think is really important to say: The people I work with really are civil servants. They genuinely, to their core, believe in the mission of what we’re doing. I do not have one person, one colleague, that said a bad thing about Trump’s foreign policy before the election. We’re under the Hatch Act. We can’t even talk about who we voted for. People take that very seriously. We take that oath very seriously. We respect the orders of the administration in power. It wasn’t until yesterday that my mission director turned to me and said it is very clear that this whole fucking thing [about a review] has been bullshit and we’re done.**
**Hold on. "Done" meaning, the idea of a review, of an examination of activities, is B.S.?**
This charade that we were going to have a pause, and then there were exemptions for life-saving work, and then there was the review where each dollar by dollar, look at the effects of this programming — which by the way, USAID people welcome that kind of evidence-based programming. We would welcome that. You didn’t need to cut off the paths to the communities we support around the world, to endanger our staff, to endanger our partners. People really, really wanted to show their commitment to being bipartisan and following the directive of this administration. It was only in the last two, three days, where everyone has realized — this whole thing is a sham.
**It’s a sham because they don’t want to review, they just want to shut down USAID?**
Exactly. There is no review. There is still no process. We are on day 14 or how many days it’s been, we have still not received one piece of guidance of how our programming will be reviewed. Not one response to, "Yes, I would like a briefing on what you’re doing." Instead, they’ve shut off our systems and are sending us home.
**And the thing is, that’s fine — well, it’s not fine. It’s illegal. But I put the most blame honestly on — and I’m sure [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio is completely incapacitated and scared to death of the DOGE boys. But to sit there on media and say it’s because we’re insubordinate that they’re making these actions, that is why I feel abandoned. It’s not that this president has decided that USAID shouldn’t exist. That’s ridiculous, but fine. But don’t sit there and slander the work I have done for you and the government for 15 years, especially when you believed in this work up until you were appointed — and tell the American people it’s because of something we’ve done wrong. That to me is why I feel abandoned.**
**It sounds like, in some ways, you’re angrier at Rubio than you are at Trump.**
I am. He knows better. He knows our work. He has seen it. He has respected it. All these Stephen Miller arguments, they’re all crazy liberals — are there a lot of Democrats in USAID? Absolutely. But at the end of the day, we honor humanitarian principles. The entire essence of what we do is nonpartisan.
When [Rubio] was selected Secretary of State, I thought, great. Maybe this isn't who I would've chosen, but a real, serious human being who has values and convictions. Maybe he’s just too scared? To me, that’s not a good enough answer.
**Talk to me for a minute about the hard and soft power elements of USAID. You’re in a difficult neighborhood and you’re trying to make friends for the U.S., it sounds like.**
I need to be really careful. I don’t want to even say the country, because that will be pinpointed. Let’s just say, there are authoritarian powers throughout the world that are cozying up more by the day to China and Russia. And we have longstanding partners who have believed in the values that Americans believe in. Democracy, human rights, respect for the rule of law.
We put these people in danger every day by working with us in countries where even an association of their name whispered with USAID could get them killed. And then we turn around and say, "Oh, sorry." Wait, we don’t even say we’re sorry, because we’ve been put under a gag order. I can’t even talk to my partners. I can’t even say, "Hey I’m really sorry to have totally fucked you over and your life."
That trauma will reap generations of resentment toward America. And I have to say, having worked in [another global hot spot], people don’t believe in the American values of democracy because they haven’t seen them. And let me say, China comes in and they give us a road and they tell us about America hypocrisy. Well, now we do look like hypocrites. And you can only look for a hypocrite in so many places for so long before you lose your ability to wield soft power. We have completely lost that.
**What have you heard from, without talking about names or what they do, what have you heard from folks on the ground who you work with, about America? What have they been saying to you the last couple of days?**
They cannot believe what happened. I will say again, the issue I work on is bipartisan. The biggest supporters of the work I’ve done have been [Senators Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham], and other pretty hawkish Republican senators who have consistently asked us to do more. "Why aren’t you doing more? More, more, more, more." And so I had been telling my partners, even after the election: Do not worry. This is a bipartisan issue.
**I’m not doing climate change. I’m not doing DEI. I’m not even feeding babies. I’m doing something that everyone — I’ve never once had a senator say, "Hey, hey, hey, you shouldn’t be doing that." If anything, they say, "Can you do more of that?"**
**And when you say more, what do you mean by more? More of what?**
I work on a program that essentially allows us to provide nonlethal assistance to [a group]. So when I say I’m doing X, Y and Z, I have people like McConnell saying: Why can’t you do more? Can’t you give them this? Why can't you give them that? I do want to draw the line, because the other weird DOGE bro line is that we’re somehow CIA. We are not. We have very, very strict statutory authority when it comes to what we can and cannot do. Our lawyers take that very, very, very seriously.
**Can you say anything, and without mentioning the country, but nonlethal aid: What are we talking about?**
Things that will help [a group] around their mission. Technical assistance, equipment that is non-lethal. How can you help a movement?
**So what are your latest instructions?**
I got up at 5 a.m. to read an ABC article to say I’m being sent back [to the U.S.] Saturday.
Every morning for the last week I’ve woken up to some piece of shitty news about the situation. This morning was that we were going to be evacuated. We talked to our colleagues, and it’s clear they’ve received no guidance from Washington. And I want to pinpoint: This is the tactic. When our leadership was cut off for insubordination or not following the "spirit" of the executive orders, we lost touch with Washington. No leadership combined with them being off the systems, we have missions and embassies that literally have no contact with Washington in terms of what we’re doing, what foreign policies we’re enacting, how we’re spending money, how we’re keeping our staff and partners safe. Nothing. I was in a mission meeting last week where the mission director said, "We have lost contact with Washington. We are on our own." I can tell you, in my entire career in government, have never seen such a thing. Not during Covid, not during crisis, not during civil war. Never.
**Right, because if you lose access to Washington, the work that you do, that’s everything.**
Everything I do I send to Washington. And then Washington sends it to relevant interagency colleagues. The kind of interagency collaboration that goes between me talking to a partner who tells me a story about something terrible that has happened to them and how that gets to the NSC, is a very, very laborious process.
**What would happen if you or one of your colleagues was kidnapped in the next day or two?**
If my colleagues were kidnapped in the next day or two, they don't even have the help button on their phone. If I had a colleague that was in West Africa and had someone from ISIS go and take them, they couldn’t even let the [Regional Security Office] know that they’ve been taken. Americans can and will die from this. And that to me, I don’t care what kind of weird power struggle you have or what your political ideology is, the fact that you are willing — or you are just so stupid that they don’t realize that cutting off these systems, you’re putting people in dangerous situations. There’s nothing. There’s no access. You can’t talk to the embassy. You can’t do anything.
**Are you planning on coming home Saturday now?**
No. The other thing I would say — there’s no articulation from Washington — some missions are preparing. And that’s the thing that is both the most heartbreaking and the most frustrating thing, these civil servants are still listening to the orders they’re getting. Even though they are insane. Even though they are putting their families at risk. At the end of the day, no one knows where we’re going. No one knows how long we’ll be paid. They talk about an exemption where we’re allowed to stay until the end of the year if we have school kids.
But the waivers and the program documents review process — I don’t think we’ll ever see that. There is literally no plan in place, and so it’s absolute chaos. So for me personally, I’m not going anywhere on Saturday. Enough is enough. You can treat me like this for so long, but I’m not going to subject my family to that treatment.
**Are you getting paid still?**
I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m being paid. I don’t know if I’m on leave. I don’t know if I’m being terminated. We know nothing. There’s no access. They’ve turned off the tap.
**What questions have you gotten from anyone in authority?**
You mean from the administration? Literally zero. The only question I’ve gotten in the last few weeks is: "How many family members do you have?" And I got that last night, assuming so they could get me on a plane. They have not asked one thing about my program or the work that my team does. They haven’t asked questions about anyone in my office.
**Lastly, you’ve talked to some of your colleagues there. I’m sure you’re talking to some in other countries. What’s the sense from other USAID workers?**
Shock and devastation. I have never seen my colleagues look this way. And we have lost people. I’ve had multiple colleagues die in terrible events. We are not a soft bunch of people when it comes to emotions.
But to look at our partners and say, well, I don’t know what to tell you. America is not coming back. You guys aren’t going to get any more help. If anything, we put you in grave danger by supporting you for this long only to abandon you at the end.
I’ll get over this. I’ll get another job and I’ll get my family somewhere. But there’s a deep trauma that comes with believing that you are representing the best of what your country has to offer, and then to realize, and then someone is making you a scapegoat for some bigger political, maniacal agenda. That is something that will take all of us for a long time to contend with.
Ben Johansen contributed to this report.
Camille Lefevre contributed to this report for TROIB News
