As President Donald Trump’s administration guts the U.S. Company for Worldwide Growth (USAID), former federal employees are being informed to say goodbye to their desks — and to take action rapidly.
USAID management despatched an electronic mail to company staffers on Tuesday instructing them that they are going to have quarter-hour to enter their former places of work on the Ronald Reagan Constructing in downtown Washington, D.C., to retrieve their private belongings.
“This Thursday and Friday ONLY–on February 27 and 28, 2025 –USAID workers may have one alternative to retrieve their private belongings,” the message reads, which was additionally posted to USAID’s authorities web site.
“Workers might be given roughly quarter-hour to finish this retrieval and have to be completed eradicating objects inside their time slot solely,” the message continues.
The e-mail features a timetable giving workers a window by which they will accumulate their belongings primarily based on their bureau or unbiased workplace.
The flag of america Company for Worldwide Growth, or USAID, proper, flies alongside the American flag in entrance the USAID workplace in Washington, Feb. 3, 2025.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
For some, the timeframe is so long as an hour and a half; for others, it is simply half an hour.
The e-mail additionally accommodates a prolonged checklist of prohibited objects that USAID workers usually are not allowed to deliver onto the premises, together with BB weapons, drills, knives, sabers, swords, nunchucks, ski poles, chlorine and liquid bleach.
In response to the message, the objects referenced “are, and have at all times been, prohibited from coming into the Ronald Reagan Constructing facility by means of a safety screening submit,” which is usually solely utilized by uncredentialled guests who’re topic to further guidelines and laws.
A number of USAID officers informed ABC Information that together with this checklist illustrates how company staff who devoted their skilled lives to overseas help at the moment are being handled like violent criminals.
“It feels like they suppose we will attempt to stage a Jan. 6-style ‘peaceable protest’,” an official stated.
The most recent directive from USAID management comes as 1,600 employees within the humanitarian help bureau acquired termination notices over the weekend and hundreds extra overseas had been placed on administrative depart.
Previous to Trump’s second administration, greater than 10,000 individuals labored at USAID.
