A thousand more USAID contractors locked out of agency’s systems

A purge of USAID contractors has left more than 1,000 locked out of the agency’s systems, with staff from Ukraine to the United States blocked from their accounts without notice. “I’m completely boxed out of the system, and there was absolutely no heads-up provided to any of us,” said one PSC, speaking from a mission in the Middle East on Monday morning. “We were all completely blindsided, including our agency leadership here at the mission who came into my office in tears this morning because they have no idea what’s going on either.” USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance, or BHA, was most affected. The move has left staff in conflict zones with no access to the United States embassy and USAID colleagues — including embassy security personnel. That also means they have zero information about how to leave their duty stations and return home. One USAID official was en route to a new assignment abroad when access was abruptly cut off, their colleague told Devex, leaving the staff member with no choice but to continue their journey not knowing what was on the other side. “This is immensely reckless for their safety and security,” a USAID official told Devex over Signal. “The waivers from Secretary of State Rubio for emergency food and other urgent assistance are a smokescreen and farce if there is no one to make the awards happen.” The group of individuals locked out is personal service contractors, or PSCs. While this set of staff members are contracted through the agency’s office of acquisition and assistance, they make up the core of BHA’s workforce — creating, managing, and overseeing thousands of awards to relief agencies across the world. The loss of BHA’s PSCs follows the mass layoffs of institutional support contractors, another category of staff similar to PSCs but employed via third parties, that previously made up 40% of the BHA team. “They lead our response teams, do our planning, run our operations, deploy overseas, do our admin, do our coordination inside and beyond the U.S. government, liaise with partners and other donors and militaries — everything,” the official told Devex. “Without the PSCs, there is no BHA anymore. We would have been hard-pressed to weather the loss of the [institutional support contractors], but without PSCs, there is no longer functionally a Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance in USAID.” The individuals leading USAID’s Ebola response were also among those who lost access to their account, an official told Devex. Late last week, Uganda confirmed an outbreak of the highly contagious hemorrhagic fever in its capital city of Kampala. The blocks came throughout the weekend, with waves of USAID teams finding out they’d been placed on leave one by one. Staffers realized they’d been locked out of their accounts, and when they called IT to inquire why, they were told to contact human resources. But given their PSC status, these staff members don’t have a typical HR team of their own — and they’ve been left scrambling to figure out who to contact, and why their access has been pulled. One official described the mood amongst USAID staff as “extremely apocalyptic.” “Like the house is on fire and we are inside it, being told to just stand and wait for it to burn down, with no access to a water hose,” the official said. “Many people feel dread, exhaustion, and also the fact that we know people will die as a result of this.” PSC contracts require 15 days’ notice if staff are to be placed on leave, and while losing access to their networks is technically not a firing, these staff members have no ability to work. In one Middle East mission, staff who had access to the building over the weekend were “frantically printing out their personal documentation” — from contracts to payslips — terrified that staff at the Department of Government Efficiency, the agency tasked with the dismantling of USAID, now had access to their employment records. “We have what’s in our contract — how much notice we’re supposed to be given until termination — but they haven’t been playing by the rules up until this point,” the staff member at the Middle East mission told Devex. “So who’s to say whether the things that are contractually liable will be upheld?” And all the while, Elon Musk — who heads the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE — has been tweeting ceaselessly about USAID, stating he supports “defunding” the agency, and that USAID is a “criminal organization” that “must die.” “We’re shutting it down,” the billionaire tweeted, with U.S. President Donald Trump’s approval. “It’s chilling. It’s absolutely chilling,” the mission staff member told Devex. “Everyone is kind of like: Yeah. Maybe this is it. This is the moment.” Ayenat Mersie contributed reporting to this story.