President Trump has ordered U.S. foreign aid to halt for 90 days while the government reviews existing programs. New administrations reviewing government-funded programs is normal. Pausing the programs during a review, however, is not.  

The world is already feeling the devastating impact of this unprecedented pause. Aid workers are being forced to make impossible decisions on whether to obey the order or keep providing live-saving, critical services and goods to people in need. People will lose access to food, medicine, vaccines, and shelter and some will even die as a result of this immoral, out-of-touch decision. Malnourished children, people living with HIV/AIDS, refugees, pregnant women, and other vulnerable populations are suddenly cut off from services that keep them alive. Hundreds of aid workers have already been dismissed or put on indefinite leave. According to recent news reports, staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have been ordered to stop working by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, despite USAID being an autonomous agency explicitly authorized by Congress in 1961. 

While Secretary of State Rubio claims the order excludes “life-saving humanitarian assistance”, the parameters of this freeze remain unclear. We are already hearing that organizations don’t know who to contact to seek clarification and guidance. Thousands of aid-providing nonprofits and NGOs have applied for a waiver to continue their critical work, but the flood of requests has led to a backlog. When faced with threats to their work, most humanitarians tend to err on the side of caution and discontinue programs.  

President Trump has also halted refugee resettlement programs and ended access to asylum. At a time when climate change, wars, civil unrest, poverty, and persecution create more and more refugees, the United States ending asylum is unacceptable. Thousands of refugees are in limbo, including those who assisted US military personnel in Afghanistan. Many have waited years to arrive in the U.S. and have passed all the security screenings only to be denied entry at the last second. No one chooses to be a refugee and as Somali-British poet Warsan Shire puts it, “no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land”. 

President Trump’s orders will have a lasting, unforeseen impact around the world for years to come. Urge your members of Congress to oppose the foreign aid freeze and end of asylum and refugee resettlement programs immediately.