Jewish and Israeli aid groups are hit by Trump’s suspension of USAID, refugee program
After the US president orders America’s largest aid body gutted, repercussions are felt around the world as programs benefiting people from Africa to Gaza have their funding frozen
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
In January, Jerrold Keilson was director of a 10-year-old program that trained over 30,000 young Africans in 49 countries in business, public administration, and more.
Keilson’s program was funded by USAID, the United States Agency for International Development, which supports disaster relief, global health, socioeconomic development, democracy, and education, among other causes. It distributed nearly $43.8 billion in fiscal 2023.
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing funding to USAID on January 20, his first day in office, saying the organization’s work was “not aligned with American interests.” Soon afterward, USAID laid off most of its 10,000 workers.
On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said 5,200 of USAID’s 6,200 programs had been purged. Those remaining would be moved to the State Department.
Amidst a complicated series of legal moves, one federal judge has permitted the administration to fire or put on leave USAID workers. At the same time, another has instructed it to pay nearly $2 billion in unpaid fees for humanitarian work. The Supreme Court upheld the latter ruling last week but without a timetable.
Keilson, a member of Olam, an umbrella organization for Jewish people and nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, working in overseas development and aid, is just one victim of the gutting of USAID.
“When the freeze happened [on January 20], we had 40 employees based in half a dozen countries, mostly Kenya, but no more funds,” Keilson told The Times of Israel from his Maryland home. “We had to start laying them off. All the training activities and curriculum revisions just stopped immediately. I found myself without a job. I now have zero work. I spend my day looking through old family photographs.”
Keilson, who has worked in and taught about international development for 40 years, said that while he could cope, his heart broke for younger colleagues in the prime of their careers and for those dependent on humanitarian relief to stay alive.
“Maybe USAID wasn’t perfect, but to stop something without much thinking about what will come next is extraordinarily cruel,” he said.
In Israel, a spokesperson for Israel’s biggest humanitarian aid NGO, IsraAID, said a project in Vanuatu had been suspended because of the freeze. “We don’t yet know what the long-term effects of the USAID changes will be for the broader humanitarian and development sector and what that will mean for us — and, more importantly, for the crisis-affected communities we serve,” he added.
Alon Haberfeld, operations and technology manager at Fair Planet, an internationally acclaimed Israeli agricultural seed project, said a $400,000 USAID grant — the primary support for a project in Rwanda — had been suspended and that, unless renewed, it would probably mean the project’s end.
Yosef (Yossi) Abramowitz, president and CEO of Gigawatt Global, which provides solar energy in the Global South, said his company had already invested $1.5 million and had been expecting a further $2 million from USAID to pave the way for development financing for a solar energy project in western Uganda.
Gigawatt Global had been working for two years with two Ugandan NGOs, Israeli NGO Cultivaid, and USAID on the project, which, Abramowitz said, would help lift women farmers out of poverty by freeing them from middlemen who paid them little and enabling them to store, process, and market their produce by themselves.
Power Africa, part of USAID, was expected to provide the $2 million to hire consultants for the detailed studies, Abramowitz said. The assumption was that an organization such as the US International Development Finance Corporation — also now suspended — would cover 70% of the $33.5 million project, enabling Gigawatt Global and partners to leverage the rest.
The team is now exploring alternatives.
In Israel, there is concern, too. Earlier this month, an Israeli official expressed worry that the USAID cuts could affect programs in Gaza, the West Bank, and beyond that were important to Israel’s security and economy. COGAT, the Israeli military body tasked with coordinating the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza, is reportedly anxious that the USAID cuts could create a humanitarian crisis if the war against Hamas resumes, given that the Knesset has severely restricted the operations of the UN aid organization UNRWA.
Halting access for refugees
On January 20, Trump not only stopped all foreign aid for 90 days; he also suspended the US Refugee Admissions Program. No refugees are being processed or resettled. On March 4, Trump told both chambers of Congress that many refugees and asylum seekers were “murderers, human traffickers, gang members and other criminals.”
Last month, the House of Representatives passed a budget resolution boosting funds for mass deportation, immigration detention, border militarization, and family separation.
HIAS — originally founded by Jews to help brethren fleeing from Eastern Europe — has joined other organizations challenging Trump’s moves against refugees.
HIAS assists refugees and asylum seekers in more than 20 countries. It helped settle 8,300 refugees in the US last year.
A spokeswoman told The Times of Israel that the organization has had to close programs serving 450,000 people and lay off hundreds of staff, suspending immediate and life-saving programs for displaced and at-risk children, mental health and psychosocial support, economic inclusion programs that supported refugees in establishing new lives, and protection against trafficking and violence for women and girls around the world.
Also feeling the heat is Early Starters International, co-founded by Israeli educators Ran Cohen Harounoff and Sarah Wilner. This provides stable learning environments for young children in Ukraine, Israel (following the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion and evacuation of southern and northern border communities), and New York.
Wilner works in New York, where four Early Childhood Safe Spaces operate, mainly for refugee and asylum-seeking families. Many of the staff are refugees, too.
Wilner said the moves against refugees and asylum seekers were creating an atmosphere of fear in which many of the 250 families — mainly mothers — using the spaces felt vulnerable and exposed. To help protect them, the organization was teaching them about their rights.
“Children are children wherever they are,” Wilner said. “They are not criminals, just people.”
