Up First from NPR - Foreign Aid Terminated, Migrants At Guantánamo, Legal Challenges To Federal Firings

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

The Trump administration says it will end more than 90 percent of the U.S. Agency for International Development's foreign aid contracts. NPR spoke to two immigrants sent to Guantánamo who allege mistreatment by detainment officers, and a federal judge will hear arguments over the Trump administration's firing of probationary employees.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Jane Greenhalgh, Anna Yukhananov, Janaya Williams and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Ben Abrams, and Paige Waterhouse. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott. And our technical director is Carleigh Strange.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, good morning. Hello. I'm doing my vocal exercises. Excellent. The brown cow needs... My mother mails me money. Unique New York. That's mine.

No, that's mine. New York. You should have an LA one. New York. This is my process, Michelle. I know. I'm totally into it. All right, we're ready. USAID has been effectively gutted.

90% of the agency's foreign aid programs have been halted and defunded. What happens now to its ongoing humanitarian projects? I'm Michelle Martin, that's A. Martinez, and this is Up First from NPR News. Two Venezuelan men who were detained at Guantanamo for weeks till NPR, they were denied access to lawyers and calls to family. That's very different from how immigration detention is typically done. Are the detainees being treated fairly? And labor unions representing thousands of laid off federal employees are challenging their dismissals in court. These are hard-working individuals.

Not only are these just people who have a job, they're people who want to make this country better. Stay with us. We've got all the news you need to start your day. The Trump administration... There is a lot happening right now in the world of economics. You may have heard about the president's desire for a sovereign wealth fund. If your country is small, well governed and has a surplus, it is probably a good idea. We are not any of those. We're here to cover federal buyouts, the cost of deportation and so much more. Tune in to MPR's The Indicator from Planet Money.

The move is terminating nearly all foreign assistance programs run by the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID. The move effectively guts the six-decade-old agency which worked to prevent the spread of disease and eliminate poverty and other programs in more than 120 countries. NPR global health correspondent Fatma Tanis joins us now with the details. So Fatma, tell us what happened. So the State Department says it's reviewed over 6,000 of USAID's foreign assistant grants and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has decided to terminate nearly all of them

quote as part of the America First agenda. Only 500 grants will be continued. Now those grants funded all kinds of humanitarian and development projects aimed at disease control, migration prevention, hunger prevention, supporting human rights, and the same process has happened over at the State Department where most foreign assistance grants around 4,100 have been cut. The State Department says they've saved about $60 billion, which is around 1% of the overall federal budget. Okay.

Now, as far as programs go, do we know what kind of programs have been cut? Well, we don't have a full picture. The State Department says that programs that the USAID is keeping includes food and life-saving assistance for HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria. Secretary Rubio had issued a waiver for those after the stop work order paused all existence foreign aid programs. But we're hearing from aid groups and NGOs that life-saving humanitarian programs, including ones that provide HIV medications, have been terminated. So have programs providing vaccination for polio, and it seems like some of those termination notices have gone out in haste because some groups

received them twice. Now one example I can tell you about a program that's been cut is in Nigeria. It provided clean water for people who were displaced because of attacks by the militant group Boko Haram. So, what's been the reaction to all this? One humanitarian official told me, quote, this is a global health massacre. That person was not authorized to speak on behalf of their organization. Now, USAID staff and aid groups are worried that cuts to USAID's programs will lead to

loss of life, like in Sudan, where hunger is widespread, and over 1,000 kitchens supported by USAID have closed. Also, children around the world who are receiving treatment for acute malnutrition, they've not been getting their medication and are at risk of dying. So where does this leave the agency USAID? Well, it's been effectively dismantled.

Today and tomorrow, hundreds of USAID staff who've been laid off or put on administrative leave will be allowed to go into the headquarters in Washington and pack up their stuff. The building doesn't have agency signage anymore. It's been removed. And the State Department says the next steps will be working with Congress to reform foreign assistance to ensure that taxpayer dollars are used to quote, make America stronger, safer and more prosperous. And the government owes about $1.5 billion to many aid organizations for work that was

already done before the Trump funding freeze, and that is now tied up in the courts. The government was given a deadline to make those payments by midnight yesterday but the Supreme Court intervened and extended the deadline. All right that's MPR's global health correspondent Fatma Tanis. Thank you very much. Thank you. Beatings, mistreatment, and constant frisks. That's what immigrants detained at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay say they experienced during the two weeks they were detained there earlier this month. The men are now back in Venezuela and NPR's Sergio Martinez Beltran has been talking to two of them.

Please note that this conversation does mention suicide. So Sergio, tell us some more about the men you talked to. Yeah, so both of them are Venezuelans and 21 years old. My friend Durán Arapé had been in detention for about 18 months, most of that time in El Paso, Texas. He does have a criminal record. While he was there, he was convicted of aggravated assault of a federal officer.

The other person I talked to was Joyner Puroiroldan. He had been in detention for six months and he does not have a criminal record besides illegal entry. He has been accused of being part of Tren de Aragua, which is a Venezuelan gang recently designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the Trump administration,

but he says he has never been a member. Okay, now both of them were detained in Guantanamo for about two weeks. Tell us more about what they're alleging happened there. So both Duran Arape and Puroiro Lantomi, the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, were not allowed to call an attorney. So they held a five-day hunger strike. At one point, they all blocked the cameras inside their cell so they could catch the

guards' attention. And one of them, Duran Arape, also kicked on the cell's door as a protest and he says soldiers showed up in riot gear. He says they would beat him up and pinned him to the ground. He alleges he was also tied to a chair 15 times and each time lasted a few hours. Things got so bad Durán Arapeses, he tried to die by suicide twice and he provided us with photos of injuries to his arms, wrists and hands. Purroy Rolán, the other man, alleges they did not have enough food. They were searching the room, they were searching when they came in. And he says their cells were searched and they were frisked every time they left.

And what is the Trump administration saying about all these allegations? So a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security tells NPR the agency cannot confirm the veracity of Duran-Arapes' claims. She says that the Tainis have, quote, access to phone utilization to reach lawyers, but she didn't provide evidence. White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt also responded to allegations made by some of the migrants detained in Guantanamo, saying the administration is targeting those who break the law. And if then you further commit heinous, brutal crimes in the interior of our country, like

raping and murdering innocent, law-abiding women and girls and committing heinous acts of violence, then you are going to be deported from this country and you may be held at Guantanamo Bay. But it's important to note that the Trump administration has admitted in court documents that nearly 30% of the detainees were considered quote low threat illegal aliens lacking a serious criminal record. The admission came as part of a lawsuit by the ACLU demanding migrants in Guantanamo get access to attorneys.

And just for some clarity, I mean, how is Guantanamo different from say a regular detention center? I mean, these two men wereanamo different from say a regular detention center? I mean, these two men were held in a part of the base that was built for alleged terrorists post 9-11, and it's been described as a place without transparency. Muneer Ahmed is a professor at Yale Law School and represented a Guantanamo prisoner for three years. He tells me Guantanamo is run by the military. That's very different from how immigration detention is typically done.

Immigration detention is civil and not criminal and not military. In an immigrant detention center, immigrants have access to attorneys and can video call their family members. That did not happen with the man detained in Guantanamo. Okay, that's NPR Sergio Martinez Beltran. Thank you very much. You're welcome. And remember, if you or someone you know, maybe considering

suicide or is in crisis, call or text 9 8 8 to reach the suicide and crisis lifeline. Today, a federal judge in San Francisco hears arguments over whether the Trump administration's firing of thousands of probationary employees should be halted. It is one of the many legal challenges the administration is coming up against as it moves forward with plans to downsize the federal workforce. NPR's Andrew Hsu is following all of this. So, Andrew, let's start with what's happening in court today.

Who brought this lawsuit? Yeah, it was originally filed by several labor unions that represent federal workers who have been fired over the last several weeks. So nurses at the VA, for example, or people who worked for the Forest Service. These were employees who were still on probationary status, meaning usually their first or second year in that job. And a lot of them were told that they were being fired for performance reasons, even though many of them had gotten positive performance reviews and some weren't even on the job long enough to get a review. So the labor unions are arguing that the agencies themselves had no plans to fire these employees

and only did so at the direction of the administration and specifically the Office of Personnel Management. All right, the Office of Personnel Management. That's something we've heard a lot lately. So remind us of what that is. Yeah, OPM is the agency that handles HR functions for the federal workforce. But to be clear, its role is to provide guidance to agencies about how to hire and fire employees. It doesn't have the authority to actually hire and fire employees of other agencies. But under this administration, OPM has taken on a far bigger role. For instance, remember that mass email that went out to the entire federal workforce last

weekend asking, you know, what did you do last week? That came from OPM. And in fact, this lawsuit also includes a complaint about this email. The unions argue that OPM exceeded its authority in asking the entire federal workforce to report back what they accomplished and also in telling agencies to fire their probationary employees. President Trump has repeatedly argued that he's revamping the federal workforce in order to save American taxpayers money and to clean up fraud and waste.

But the union's attorneys say there's a way to go about doing that legally and this is not it. So apart from that lawsuit, I know you've reported on six fired workers who've been temporarily reinstated. Who are those workers? Yeah, these are six employees at different federal agencies who were fired about two weeks ago and they were part of a separate complaint that a different set of attorneys brought to the Office of Special Counsel. That's the federal watchdog agency that's responsible for protecting federal workers from illegal actions by the government. So the special counsel began looking into these firings and found evidence that agencies

hadn't followed proper procedures for firing them. And the special counsel asked a separate federal board to issue a stay and on Tuesday night this week the board granted that and ordered these six workers reinstated through April 10th so that the special counsel's investigation can continue. Okay, just only six people? Yeah, for now. The attorneys in the case, including Michelle Berkovich, have asked the special counsel to seek relief for, you know, many thousands of probationary workers who say they were fired in the exact same way. Here's what she said. I mean, these are hardworking individuals. Not only are these just people who have a job, they're people who want to make this country better.

In the office of special counsel, they have said that they're looking into ways to address a larger group of people who have been similarly fired. The office, though, doesn't normally pursue complaints like this. So this is really unprecedented, as are the firings that led to this investigation. And lastly, I'll just note that this week we also saw the Trump administration issue guidance to agencies on further downsizing, on deeper cuts that are ahead, so we may continue to see litigation there. All right, that's NPR's Indra Shoo.

Thanks a lot. You're welcome. And that's a first for Thursday, February 27th. I'm Amar Tienes. And I'm Michelle Martin. How about making your next listen consider this? The team behind NPR's All Things Considered goes deep into a single new story in just 15 minutes. Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Today's episode of Up First was edited by Jane Greenhalgh, Anna Yukhaninoff, Janaya Williams, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Jane Greenhalgh, Anna Yukhaninoff, Janaya Williams, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Ziad Butch, Ben Abrams, and Paige Waterhouse. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott, and our technical director is Carly Strange.

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