The thousands of people who work for the U.S. government’s main agency for humanitarian aid and disaster relief have been on the front lines of efforts to fight famine, contain virulent infectious diseases like H.I.V. and Ebola, and rebuild infrastructure in impoverished and war-torn countries.
On Friday evening, just hours before the vast majority of them were set to have been suspended with pay or laid off, a court issued a limited, temporary order against the Trump administration’s moves to shut down the agency.
The order was a temporary reprieve to approximately 2,700 direct hires of the U.S. Agency for International Development who were on administrative leave or set to be placed on leave by midnight Friday. For the past two weeks, they and the contractors who work for the agency had been in the throes of a collective panic as the Trump administration began to lay off staff and signaled it planned to decimate the agency.
But the U.S.A.I.D. work force, and the aid industry that relies in large part on the agency’s funding, is still acutely in limbo. On Saturday, U.S.A.I.D. informed employees affected by the order that employees already on administrative leave would be reinstated until the end Friday, Feb. 14, and that no one else would be suspended with pay during that period, according to a copy of the notice viewed by The New York Times. But those employees could still have to wait for weeks, months, or potentially even longer, for a verdict. The case, which was brought on behalf of unions representing the workers, is expected to go to the Supreme Court, and it is unclear whether the jobs will ever exist again.
The Trump administration’s announcement this week that U.S.A.I.D. would dismiss almost all of its contractors and that most Foreign Service officers and other direct hires would be put on indefinite administrative leave set off a panic around the globe, as Americans posted in missions abroad scrambled to dismantle and reassemble their lives.
The announcement gave Foreign Service officers just 30 days to depart their posts and return to the United States if they wanted the U.S. government to pay for their relocation, forcing nearly the entire diplomatic staff to plan the sort of swift exit that normally only takes place during coups and wars.
Many employees with children had to decide whether to pull them out of school immediately, or leave families behind until the end of the school year. Some with medical conditions, including late-stage and high-risk pregnancies, worried about the dangers traveling and the status of their health care. Several agonized over what to do about pets, because it was not possible to procure the paperwork necessary to enter the United States in just a few weeks.
The reductions at U.S.A.I.D. appear to have been driven largely by Elon Musk, the tech magnate President Trump deputized to make budget cuts across the government, and Pete Marocco, the State Department’s director of foreign aid, whom Mr. Rubio appointed this week to run the day-to-day business of U.S.A.I.D.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has assumed overall authority of U.S.A.I.D., tried to tamp down the fears, encouraging people to apply for waivers to delay travel and arguing that the Trump administration was “not trying to be disruptive to people’s personal lives.”
But as stop-work orders and reports of massive cuts at the agency rippled across the global aid industry, and scores of nongovernmental organizations and consulting firms that relied on the agency’s funding laid off staff, the agency’s workers braced for its potential end.
One American posted to a U.S.A.I.D. mission in Africa said that he and his wife, a Foreign Service officer, had both been suspended.
“Two weeks ago we were two gainfully employed people with onward assignments, and now we’ve seen the entire industry decimated and we’re returning to the U.S. without jobs,” he said.
He, like many others, spoke on the condition of anonymity, as those still on the agency’s payroll have been instructed not to publicly discuss the changes underway. Employees fear that flouting the order could jeopardize whatever benefits they might still be eligible for, such as pensions and severance pay — though it was unclear if the Trump administration would honor such obligations.
On Thursday, a subset of U.S.A.I.D. employees began receiving notices that they had been deemed “essential,” meaning they would not be suspended or laid off — for now.
“This is your formal notification that you are expected to keep working, effective immediately, and until notified otherwise,” the emailed notification said, according to a copy reviewed by The New York Times.
It was not immediately clear how many employees had been deemed essential. On Thursday afternoon, senior U.S.A.I.D. leaders were told that the Trump administration planned to reduce the agency’s staff to about 290, according to three people informed directly about the details of the call. By Friday morning, however, senior agency officials were being told that the number of retained employees was 611, according to two people familiar with the internal guidance.
Some speculated that the number of people retained might climb slightly higher, as bureau and regional leaders fought to preserve as many positions as possible to continue the agency’s lifesaving work.
Either way, the cuts to a work force of more than 10,000 promised to be drastic.
“What is happening is devastating, it’s hard to put it into words, but it’s devastating,” said Maria Carrasco, who had worked for the aid agency or projects abroad it had funded for the last 25 years, she said, before being terminated with other contractors last week. “We are people who put our sweat and tears in to these organizations, because we believe in the ultimate goal of helping people. And now it’s been erased.”
The moves against the U.S.A.I.D. work force began in earnest on Jan. 28, four days after the stop-work orders were issued.
Samantha Cooper, a contractor whose employment was terminated, had been working in maternal and child health and nutrition at the aid agency, and was set to begin a new job this past Monday in the Office of H.I.V./AIDS. Within days, she went from being excited about an upcoming career milestone to straining to make ends meet.
“I’m having to file for unemployment, which doesn’t even cover rent; food stamps, which — that’s fine, it at least gets me groceries,” she said in a telephone interview. Her medical coverage ran out on Friday last week.
Ms. Cooper, who is based in Tulsa, Okla., said she felt luckier than most.
“I have co-workers that are going through I.V.F., and they’ve lost all their benefits; people going through cancer treatments and with parents on hospice — and they were the breadwinners,” she said. “I feel privileged to say this is only what I’m struggling with. I know there are so many others having to deal with that, and it is literally going to break them.”
That was the fear for one Foreign Service officer in Asia who discovered this week that an immediate family member needed to be evacuated for a life-threatening health condition, only to be told by superiors that amid the dissolution of U.S.A.I.D., there was no funding available for emergency medical travel. Their only option, the officer was told, would be to immediately return to the United States, where they have nowhere to live, and leave their belongings and pets behind.
Another Foreign Service officer working at a mission in Africa wrestled with how to break the news to her two young children.
She also worried that she and her spouse, who also works in development, would have to live off the savings they had hoped to put toward a house if they both soon found themselves out of work.
“It just feels like the entire sector is sinking, and so how am I going to find a job?” she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, like others, for fear of retaliation. “All I know is development, all I know is public health — I’ve dedicated my life to this. What other skills do I have?”
The decimation of U.S.A.I.D. has set off a domino effect, as contractors, nongovernmental organizations and consulting firms that rely on funding from the agency for their projects also are forced to make cuts. At least 10,000 American jobs in the sector have already disappeared, according to InterAction, which represents a number of organizations specializing in foreign aid.
“It’s the evisceration of the sector,” Tom Hart, the president and chief executive officer of InterAction, said.
Employees of nongovernmental organizations and companies that rely on U.S.A.I.D. funding said they had effectively been blocked from accessing any funding through the agency’s accounting system, and in some cases, had months of expenses with no guarantee that the federal government would reimburse them.
Resonance, a development consulting firm that employed about 150 people around the world, is an example of a small company taking a big hit. The firm did about 75 percent of its business with U.S.A.I.D. before the contraction. It has bills going back to November that the agency has yet to cover, Steve Schmida, its co-founder, said in an interview.
“We’re being forced to carry a huge amount of cost with no clarity if and when we will get paid or reimbursed,” Mr. Schmida said, adding that he had to lay off almost 90 percent of his U.S.-based staff. He is going without pay for three months to help free up funds to keep his business afloat, he said.
But as news of the drastic staff reductions took hold, he was losing hope that the government would ever cover the funding his firm had been promised.
“It’s just been a catastrophe,” he said of the U.S.A.I.D. cuts, adding: “I think it’s dawning on everyone that this is over.”
Edward Wong contributed reporting from Bangkok and Chris Cameron from Washington.
