PORT-AU-PRINCE — Military assistance to Egypt and Israel, and emergency food aid are — for now— the only exceptions the Trump administration is making to an executive order temporarily halting U.S. foreign aid for 90 days, pending a review.
The waivers were listed in an internal State Department memo obtained by the Miami Herald that was distributed to offer guidance about the review process being launched by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The goal of the exercise is to see if the programs being funded are aligned with President Donald Trump’s foreign policy agenda following his signing of the order on Monday.
The memo, sent to State Department employees on Friday and obtained by the Miami Herald, virtually halts all aid and says that “effective immediately, no new obligations shall be made for foreign assistance” until the secretary makes a determination after a review.
The memo also states that “stop orders” are to be immediately issued for existing awards.
U.S. Agency for International Development, agreement officers and implementing partners were subsequently informed of the decision via email. Bottom line: All new aid is halted, and payments for approved aid are stopped until further review.
The stoppage is a catastrophic blow in Haiti where the government is already operating on a shoestring budget of $2.5 billion for about 12 million people. Providers say it risks making an already tragic situation even worse at a time when gangs are carrying out mass massacres, the healthcare system is near collapse and diseases like HIV and tuberculosis are seeing a resurgence, and women continue to die in childbirth.
“I do not have the specific numbers by sector, but I imagine this can have a negative impact on security and health that greatly benefit these sectors,” said Port-au-Prince-based economist Kesner Pharel. He had hoped, he said, that Haiti would make the short list with Israel and Egypt.
Several providers contacted by the Herald said they are still trying to figure out the impact to their programs. But already some were seeing the effects: A hospital administrator trying to request an online fund transfer for HIV/AIDS funding approved until March was unable to do so. Similarly, the editor-in-chief of the country’s oldest newspaper, Le Nouvelliste, announced over the radio during his editorial segment on Magik9 on Thursday that its USAID-financed advertising had ceased.
The U.S. doesn’t provide direct funding to Haiti, even though it is the Caribbean nation’s largest donor. However, its a crucial source of support to multiple sectors, from healthcare to policing. The Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) in particular, pays a pivotal role in the fight against armed gangs. INL trains and equips the Haiti National Police, providing them everything from night googles and guns to a specialized SWAT training.
This decision, Democratic lawmakers Gregory Meeks of New York and Lois Frankel of Florida told Rubio in a letter on Friday, “will cost lives.”
Meeks, ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Frankel, ranking member on Appropriations Committee on National Security, said the block on all funds and the stop order on existing programs “has immediate detrimental impacts, including possible closure of implementing partner organizations needed to carry out this work.” Congress, they said, had already cleared the funds, and it is their constitutional duty to see that funding is spent as directed.
Trump’s “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid” executive order, “undermines American leadership and credibility around the world,” the letter said. U.S. foreign aid, it went on say, isn’t about a handout but rather “a strategic investment in our future that is vital for U.S. global leadership and a more resilient world. It directly serves our national interests and demonstrates our credibility to allies, partners, and vulnerable people who rely on American assistance for survival.”
Asking that funding immediately be resumed, the lawmakers warned that “the damage we risk is simply too high.” To illustrate their points, they said under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, PEPFAR, the U.S. currently provides 20.6 million people across 55 countries with anti-retroviral treatment for HIV/AIDS, according to the letter. Another 37 million have access to mosquito nets, while 63 million get medicines to prevent the spread of deadly malaria under the President’s Malaria Initiative. “These lives depend on an uninterrupted supply of medicines, and your pause in funding will cost lives,” the lawmakers wrote.
They ended their letter by noting that a crisis-wracked and impoverished Haiti, along with Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine, are the places where people are relying on the aid for survival.
A spokesperson at the State Department did not answer the Herald’s questions about the effects of the freeze on Haiti funding. Aid providers, including those who do not get direct U.S. funding, say they fear that health services and security will bear the brunt. According to the U.S. government, USAID has provided more than $170 million in life-saving humanitarian assistance since the 2021 budget year, and between 2021 and June of last year, INL disbursed at least $189 million to develop and professionalize the Haiti National Police.
At the same time, the Biden administration disbursed more than $600 million in funds and in-kind contributions for the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission that began deploying in late June to help Haiti’s police take on armed gangs. Last week, Kenya deployed the third contingent of 217 police officers to Haiti, but 400 other trained and U.S. vetted officers still remain in Nairobi.
How the U.S.’s wide reaching freeze will affect the international armed mission, which has only amassed $110 million in foreign assistance in its United Nations trust fund, is among the unanswered questions about the freeze’s ripple effects. Sources say a lot depends on what was disbursed for the mission, and in the pipeline before the Biden administration left power.
A Washington observer who is familiar with how U.S. government funding works said the halt means that all money for Haiti, including for the U.S.-backed anti-gang armed security mission, is frozen. The security mission and Haiti National Police will need to make do with what they have for the time being, the person said. That includes ammunition, which the Biden administration provided last year and became essential in helping security forces take on a powerful gang coalition trying to take over large swaths of Port-au-Prince, targeting critical infrastructures like government buildings and hospitals.
Months after the attacks led to a months-long closure of the main airport, the escape of more than 4,000 prisoners following gang raids on two of the largest prisons, and the installation of a new political transition body, the environment remains highly volatile. Gangs last year killed more than 5,600 Haitians with their renewed and intensified attacks, pushed the number of internally displaced Haitians to over 1 million after they were forced to flee their homes and plunged more people — 6 million currently — into even more dire straits and in need of humanitarian assistance.
And the gripping violence has continued. The day of Trump’s inauguration, a gang operating near the U.S. embassy opened fire on an armored embassy van, wounding a gardener as he and other employees were being transported to the embassy’s housing compound on a winding, dirt road. The next day, gangs launched another attack, this time killing a woman and injuring several people when they shot up two armored vehicles belonging to the Consul of India and opened fire on a third car in the convoy, not far from the capital’s international airport.
On Wednesday, members of the U.N. Security Council did not mention the U.S.’s freeze. But concerns about funding fueled diplomats’ discussions as they expressed alarm about the continuing intensification of Haiti’s gang violence and deepening humanitarian crisis amid a slow-moving political process to get a newly elected president and parliament in office by February of 2026.
In pointed remarks, China’s deputy permanent representative sought to put the burden of Haiti’s crisis on the United States, saying the U.S. represents the largest source of the illegal high-powered weapons flowing into the hands of armed criminal groups. He is the one who last year initiated and pushed for the Security Council to mandate the creation of the Multinational Security Support mission (MSS). “Thus the United States has the greatest responsibility and obligation to support and assist the MSS to ensure it delivers its mandate and plays its role,” Geng Shuang said before the U.S.’s representative issued a rebuttal, rejecting “the scapegoating.”
The fate of the mission, though authorized until October, remains uncertain. Though Rubio signaled support for it during his confirmation hearing, the level of future U.S. commitment is unclear. A fourth contingent of Kenyan police officers, who were expected to arrive days after the East African nation deployed 217 police officers to Port-au-Prince, remain in Nairobi as part of 400 cops already trained and vetted but yet to join the MSS.
Joonkook Hwang, the permanent representative of the Republic of Korea, said though the international community had made a concerted effort to help Haiti address its terrorizing gang violence, the Kenya-led mission has “fallen short of expectations, primarily due to resource and financial constraints.” In the face of the delay of bringing the mission to its full operational strength of 2,500, the security situation continues to deteriorate.
“Last week, the government of the Republic of Korea made a financial contribution of around $10 million to the MSS trust fund,” he said. “We hope this contribution inspires support for Haiti.”
While organizations providing critical services risk them stopping with the funding freeze, one certain effect people are bracing themselves for is the loss of jobs among contractors who can’t afford to wait 90 days to get reimbursed for services. Then there is the matter of Trump’s foreign policy, which includes stopping irregular migration at the border and seeing if countries in the region are willing to relieve the pressure by taking in migrants rejected by their home nations, which several countries said had been requested by his team before his swearing-in.
This is most likely to come up as Rubio embarks on his first official visit to the region as secretary of state next week. His itinerary includes visits to Panama, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. With aid long being the U.S.’s carrot, and one that is currently frozen, Rubio’s tour through Central America and the Caribbean begs the question of what he will be offering to help him carry out Trump’s agenda.
By JACQUELINE CHARLES/Miami Herald
