Two days before staffers at the US African Development Foundation (USADF) refused to let DOGE staffers enter the door to their offices, Donald Trump stood before Congress and mocked what he described as “appalling waste” in foreign aid.
“Eight million to promote LGBTQ+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of,” the president scoffed. “Sixty million for indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombian empowerment in Central America. Sixty million.”
Grassroots aid aims to help communities “solve their own problems”—and stem migration to the U.S.
The expenditures he outlined weren’t USADF programs, and it’s unclear if the Lesotho funding, for instance, is even real—the country’s government has said it has “no idea” what Trump was referring to. But as Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE team continue trying to dismantle foreign aid, they’ve stepped beyond the USAID to set their sights on two very small agencies: the USADF and the Inter-American Foundation (IAF), which was founded by Congress in 1969 and funds community development in Latin America and the Caribbean.
On February 19, Trump issued an executive order directing that both agencies should “eliminate non-statutory functions and associated personnel to the extent consistent with applicable law.” In practice, that has meant quickly gutting both in ways that the agencies themselves and some Democratic members of Congress say is illegal, given that both were founded by Congress and should only be dismantled by an act of Congress.
As Trump’s speech made clear, the campaign against these tiny agencies has relied on literal, government-backed disinformation. Trump and DOGE have twisted and mischaracterized the U.S.’ own aid programs to make them sound frivolous, wasteful, and unimportant. Ironically, both agencies have worked towards goals that Trump and Musk have claimed they support: the IAF was specifically focused on reducing what they call “irregular migration” to the United States. And the USADF tries to stabilize economies in rural Africa, in part, a USADF staffer tells Mother Jones, to discourage people from joining terrorist groups which destabilize the region and could be hostile to the United States.
The USADF works in Somalia, where the group Al-Shabaab is based, and in Uganda, which borders the Democratic Republic of Congo; that border is where a rebel group called the Allied Democratic Forces is based, who, among other acts, attacked a Ugandan school in 2023 and killed at least 41 people, many of them students in dormitories that were set on fire.
“If we leave there’s going to be a vacuum not just of U.S. presence, but economic stability,” says a USADF worker who asked for anonymity to freely discuss their work. “And a significant increase in unemployment in young men who are now much more susceptible to joining a terrorist organization… you’re going to start seeing those terrorist organizations reach into other countries and end up In Europe and America.”
The anti-foreign aid campaign has been pushed forward by wide mockery from Musk’s DOGE and their allies at outlets like Fox News of purportedly “questionable” foreign spending, including “$813,210 for vegetable gardens in El Salvador, $731,105 to improve the marketability of mushrooms and peas in Guatemala, $677,342 to expand fruit and jam sales in Honduras, $483,345 to improve artisanal salt production in Ecuador and $39,250 for beekeeping in Brazil.” The Fox News article refers to these as “big ticket items”—which they are not; they are in fact trivially small amounts compared to the billions spent by, for instance, the Pentagon. A supposedly automated Twitter/X account dedicated to extolling DOGE’s achievements also mocked Guatemalan mushrooms, calling the outlay “a prime example of taxpayer dollars funding foreign pet projects while ignoring American needs.”
But in fact, as the IAF’s now-deleted website made clear, the real goal of funding such grassroots programs was to help communities “realize opportunities and solve their own problems”—and to stem migration to the U.S.
“If we leave there’s going to be a vacuum not just of U.S. presence, but economic stability.
“People in the Latin American and Caribbean region leave their homes due to violence and insecurity, lack of viable economic opportunities, food insecurity, and increasingly harsh environmental conditions that exhaust their household resources,” a 2023 version of the IAF website explained. “With corruption and impunity commonplace, people can also lose faith that their governments will effectively meet their needs.”
The organization explained that people are “less likely to uproot their lives and migrate if they can remain safely at home, earn a living, provide for their families, and have a say in making decisions to improve their quality of life. We also understand that people are most motivated to stay when they can tackle and see improvement on multiple issues.” In a story on the shuttered IAF website, a Guatemalan woman working with a local mushroom cooperative is quoted saying, “I haven’t migrated to the U.S. because I’ve had the opportunity to work here.”
Given Trump and Musk’s virulently anti-immigrant rhetoric (despite Musk being an immigrant himself), those efforts to reduce immigration would presumably have been something they should have supported.
If DOGE is looking for “big ticket items” to cut, they also won’t find any at USADF, where the maximum amount that could be given to any organization was $350,000, “after thorough due diligence and a background check on the organization,” according to the employee who worked there.
Trump’s foreign aid freeze caused many of the people the agency works with in Africa to immediately lose their jobs “with no severance or notice,” the USADF worker said. “These are our colleagues. We work with them daily.”
Musk’s DOGE, along with Trump ally and State Department official Peter Marocco, have been the architects of the destruction of foreign aid. Marocco was placed in charge of IAF last week, after the White House fired its CEO Sara Aviel, who did not respond to a request for comment. Redacted minutes from a hasty February 28 board meeting where Marocco declared himself to be in charge of IAF show that the only people present were Marocco and two DOGE staffers, Ethan Shaotran and Nate Cavanaugh. During the meeting, Marocco claimed he was convening the board on an emergency basis pursuant to Trump’s executive order to reduce the agency’s staffing, and said that he had not been able to reach anyone associated with IAF before calling the meeting.
“Until I am more familiar with the agency and can appoint a new one, I am designating myself as the acting CEO and president of the IAF,” Marocco declared before immediately closing the meeting.
An IAF employee told Mother Jones that workers at the agency have been issued reduction in force notices, which are usually given 60 days before employees will be let go. In the case of IAF, for reasons that weren’t explained, it was only 30. “Intentional cruelty is their M.O.,” the employee said.
USADF has filed a lawsuit laying out DOGE’s aggressive tactics in trying to wrest control.
The shuttering of the IAF also means that millions of dollars from private foundations will also have to be returned. “As a result of this illegal destruction of the agency, taxpayers are giving back more than $5 million dollars donated by the private sector and private philanthropy,” that person told Mother Jones. “Half was in hand and half was committed legally; nearly all will never be invested on behalf of the U.S. in the region.”
On Wednesday March 5, Marocco arrived at the USADF offices with DOGE staffers to try to execute an administrative coup similar to the one they engineered at IAF. There, however, employees refused to let them enter. The following day, Marocco and the DOGE staffers returned to USADF with five U.S. Marshals, according to the Washington Post. USADF employees, meanwhile, left through a back entrance, one tells Mother Jones.
Later that day, USADF filed a lawsuit suing Trump and DOGE, laying out the aggressive and highly unusual tactics Marocco and the DOGE staff took in trying to wrest control of the agency. On Thursday night, USADF won a preliminary injunction to keep from being shut down, at least for a few days: a judge’s order bars current CEO Ward Brehm from being removed from the foundation’s board and prevents DOGE from adding members to it.
Nonetheless, a USADF employee told Mother Jones on Friday morning that workers were unable to enter the building with their key cards, which appear to have been disabled. The employee saidthey and their colleagues plan to try to continue doing their jobs as long as they legally can: “Just as Trump did, I also took an oath of office and I’m abiding by it. I take it very seriously.”
“I’m resigned to the fact that I’m going to lose my job,” the USADF worker said. “But if you’re going to fire me, fire me legally.”
