The Trump administration is reportedly selling, redistributing, or simply losing track of millions of dollars worth of equipment and supplies connected to the U.S. Agency for International Development, the foreign aid agency it shuttered and folded into the State Department earlier this year.
As a result, former USAID staffers and contractors told The Atlantic, the U.S. appears to be parting with equipment for pennies on the dollar and losing track of what was once carefully monitored U.S. property, raising security concerns.
The U.S. embassy in Guatemala has auctioned off electronics like iPads, ring lights, megaphones, and defibrillators, while a USAID warehouse in Nigeria sold off computer supplies and used generators, according to the magazine.
Others tied to the doomed agency, which formally folded at the beginning in July, have tried to distribute their life-saving supplies to NGOs and governments who might put them to use, even though they haven’t been formally directed to by the U.S. government.
“It is very hard for us to see nutritional support for children and say, ‘Okay, we’re not going to use this because we are waiting for the U.S. government to tell us what to do with it,’” Sherine Ibrahim, the director of the International Rescue Committee in Afghanistan, told the magazine of an attempt to get medical supplies out to surviving clinics after the U.S. pulled back funding.
In response to the reporting, the State Department said wind-down plans have been orderly and have been “spelled out in official communications to employees, as well as follow-up notices and formal documents,” while sensitive electronics have been subject to “procedures such as encryption, multi-factor authentication, and remote wiping to ensure minimal risk to any government data.”
Other USAID property has reportedly languished or been destroyed, while Congress passed a package clawing back $8.3 billion in mostly foreign aid funds in July.
A USAID inspector was reportedly fired in February after revealing $500 million in food aid was about to spoil amid a funding freeze on aid projects the Trump administration put in place soon after taking office.
Last month, the State Department said it has plans to destroy approximately 500 tons of government-funded emergency food supplies, while this month, the Trump administration reportedly will destroy nearly $10 million in contraceptives tied to the former agency.
On Wednesday, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to rule on an emergency request in its attempt to freeze billions of foreign aid previously appropriated by Congress.
Last week, a federal judge ruled that former employees and contractors of USAID could pursue a legal challenge against the administration for shutting down the agency, after previously ruling the administration had likely violated the separate of powers in the Constitution and the Appropriations Clause in its rapid moves to shutter the agency.
The U.S., once the top donor to global health and development causes, could cause as many as 14 million in excess deaths by 2040 through ending its aid efforts, a Lancet study found last month.
