A prime official with the U.S. Company for Worldwide Growth acknowledged that “adjustments” within the company’s fee system had left some overseas service officers with out “sure allowance funds” in current weeks because the Trump administration has sought to dismantle the help group, based on a sworn declaration filed Friday in federal courtroom.
Peter Marocco, a Trump loyalist and the architect of efforts to slash USAID as a part of President Donald Trump’s large federal cuts, wrote in his eight-page affidavit that the company is “working diligently to handle these delays,” which he mentioned included “routine funds to workers” stationed abroad. The company has positioned a number of workers on short-term paid go away, together with some deployed in high-risk international locations.
“Though these delays may proceed to impression sure funds to workers within the quick future, an worker’s go away standing wouldn’t itself impression the timing or eligibility for such funds,” Marocco mentioned.
Marocco didn’t specify what number of authorities staff have been impacted, nor did he describe what actions had precipitated the delays, besides to name them “adjustments within the course of by which funds might be made and accepted by the Company over the previous weeks.”
Assist organizations have additionally reported having issue accessing funds dispersed by the company’s fee system, known as Phoenix, although it was not clear from Marocco’s affidavit whether or not these points had been associated.
Marocco penned the affidavit as a part of a lawsuit introduced by a union that represents authorities workers who’re difficult the staffing cuts to USAID being made by the administration and its new Division of Authorities Effectivity. Plaintiffs within the case embody overseas service officers who described their harrowing escape from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in current weeks amid protests tearing by the nation.
USAID contract employee Priya Kathpal, proper, and Taylor Williamson, who works for an organization doing contract work for USAID, carry indicators exterior the USAID headquarters in Washington, Feb. 10, 2025.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
One such official, recognized within the courtroom file solely as Olivia Doe, mentioned she and her household had been evacuated from Kinchasa by speedboat in the midst of the evening solely “with what may match on our laps,” calling the expertise “traumatizing” for her two babies who “witnessed the violence on the streets.”
“Three days later, we lastly arrived again to winter in DC with no heat garments, a spot to remain, or a college for the youngsters to go to,” Doe wrote. “We arrived to the information that DOGE and the Trump Administration had been calling us ‘criminals’ — one thing significantly arduous to abdomen after the ordeal we had simply survived.”
Doe added that she feared shedding her evacuation allowance “as a result of whims of DOGE and the Trump Administration,” saying it could be “utterly unfair and inhumane to chop USAID evacuees off from the particular evacuation allowance after many people served for years in what is among the poorest international locations on the planet.”
Marocco responded to a few of these issues in his affidavit on Friday, claiming that the administration’s communication with workers being evacuated “was clear, constant, and with out disruption,” and that those that left the Congo “had been welcomed by a USAID touchdown group at Dulles Airport in Dulles, Virginia, and had been supplied a number of requirements and care packages upon their arrival to the US.”
