Trump funding cuts hurt 80% of USAID Central America programs: Report

Over 80% of U.S. Agency for International Development programs in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala experienced adverse effects due to the suspension of aid to the region in March 2019 under former President Donald Trump, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report released publicly Monday.

USAID reported that 92 of its 114 projects in the region had to reduce the size and scope of programs and saw negative effects on institutional capacity, as well as timeliness and efficiency of activities. Sixty-five of the State Department’s 168 projects, or nearly 40%, experienced the same.

USAID said it missed 19% of performance targets in fiscal year 2019, while the State Department missed 30%. Projects reported serving fewer clients than planned; decreasing the frequency, quality, and types of services provided; and reducing geographic coverage and objectives.

The funding cuts also negatively impacted staff morale, with implementing partners for 40 USAID projects reporting layoffs, while 20 projects had to reduce hours or pay. Twenty-six projects said implementing partners’ reputations and relationships with local communities were damaged.

“One implementing partner told us that its project, which sought to empower communities to design and lead communal development activities, experienced security risks for its staff and its sub-partners’ staff rising out of community frustration with the project having to delay, modify, or cancel activities,” the GAO report found.

“In the end, the implementing partner had to stop activities in 20 communities due to threats to staff, such as threatening phone calls and messages warning the partner not to return to the community, and threats of violence passed from community members through local government officials.”

The report offers the fullest picture yet of the harm done by ping-ponging funding levels under an administration that routinely politicized foreign assistance. Trump suspended aid to the Northern Triangle out of frustration that governments of the three countries were not stopping people from migrating to the U.S. southern border.

He ordered 85%, or $396 million, of fiscal year 2018 funding for the region to be reprogrammed to other activities. Prior fiscal year funding that was previously obligated was allowed to be spent after a review was undertaken by the administration.

Under President Joe Biden, meanwhile, the U.S. has pledged to spend $4 billion over four years in Central America, including to address the root causes of migration. But due to delays caused by the U.S. budgeting and disbursement process, the effects of Trump’s suspension persist.

GAO reviewed the aid interruption at the request of several members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, including Rep. Gregory Meeks, a Democrat from New York who chairs the committee. The watchdog examined documents and interviewed officials from USAID and the State Department, as well as implementing partners.

Sixty-two USAID projects reported that work was slowed or delayed by the funding cuts, while 45 said that various subawards and contracts were never made.

“​​In August 2019, USAID also had to cancel an $8 million project that had the goal of reducing the criminal recidivism rate among at-risk youth in Honduras. The cancelation happened after a year of planning activities, incurring over $1.1 million in closeout costs,” the GAO report said. “When the administration announced the suspension of assistance funding, the implementing partner had spent almost a year preparing the project and had hired international and local staff to work in Honduras.”

USAID did not respond to a request for comment on how the funding cutoff affected its relationships with partner organizations operating in the three countries. In a letter included in the GAO report, USAID said it concurred with the report’s conclusions.

Most new funding remained suspended for up to 14 months as the Trump administration negotiated with leaders of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala over measures to reduce migration to the U.S. Those negotiations resulted in “Asylum Cooperative Agreements” that required people seeking asylum to do so within the region instead of at the U.S. southern border. After the deals were signed, the Trump administration approved additional funding for the Northern Triangle. It ended the suspension in June 2020.

The prolonged suspension resulted in an 87% decrease in U.S. funding for fiscal year 2018 compared with fiscal year 2017.

“After the end of the suspension, USAID adjusted its assistance portfolio to implement projects that focused on deterring migration and designed new indicators to assess the relationship between its assistance projects and migration from the region,” the report said. “Officials from State and USAID said their overall assistance approach of promoting prosperity, good governance, and security remained the same after the suspension.”

Between fiscal years 2013 and 2018, the U.S. allocated about $2.4 billion in assistance to the Northern Triangle through various agencies. USAID allocated $1.44 billion of that total, while the State Department allocated $464 million, with funding used to promote development and reforms in the region.

USAID officials told GAO that mission operations in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala remain hampered by the 2019 cuts because they are still trying to ramp up assistance to previous levels.

“Officials told us they could not start to design projects or issue requests for applications until they knew the plans for reinstating the assistance funding, resulting in programming gaps between the end of previous projects and the start of new ones,” the report found. “According to these officials, field operations will not return to previous implementation levels until at least fiscal year 2023.”