USAID workers will be escorted to their desks and have 15 minutes to collect personal belongings from gutted agency HQ this week

Former USAID employees will have just 15 minutes to collect their belongings as they are escorted to their desks before leaving the gutted Washington HQ later this week.

A note circled by USAID Tuesday told staffers that ‘this Thursday and Friday ONLY’ they will ‘have the opportunity’ to collect their belongings from the office.

Employees were warned that if they do not show up during the allocated slots, their possessions will be stored in a federal warehouse and could be damaged or lost.

All staff will be scanned and X-rayed before they are allowed in and ‘escorted to their workplace, where they will be permitted to collect their personal items’.

‘Staff will be given approximately 15 minutes to complete this retrieval and must be finishing removing items within their time slot only.’

Members of the public were quick to express their sympathy with workers suffering the indignity after being turfed out of the Agency for International Development, following the Trump administration’s decision to cut work they deemed ‘wasteful’.

Danny, a retired Sergeant Major, wrote on X: ‘Some have worked there over 20 years. Felons are treated better than people who spent their lives in humanitarian assistance.’

Tim Massie wrote: ‘There’s no reason for #Musk’s and #Trump’s cruelty, other than their own narcissism. #USAID workers will be given 15 minutes to clean out offices.

‘Children in countries served by the agency will die. Where are the TV reporters asking if Musk & Trump are fine with children dying?’

President Donald Trump and the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency tied to billionaire Elon Musk have moved swiftly to shutter USAID, calling its programs out of line with the president’s agenda and asserting without evidence that its work is wasteful.

Criticism has fallen on the government for justifying their plan with appeal to misleading claims about how USAID money is spent. Many supposed payments issued by the agency were later revealed to have come from different departments, or were later contested by various alleged recipients.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration presented a plan to dramatically cut staffing worldwide for U.S. aid projects while slashing thousands of jobs to leave the agency with fewer than 300 workers.

Federal workers associations filed suit asking a federal court to stop the shutdown, arguing that President Donald Trump lacks the authority to shut down an agency enshrined in congressional legislation.

But on Saturday, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols cleared the way for the administration to move forward with pulling staffers from the job in the U.S. and around the world.

Commentators were sympathetic with staff at the Washington headquarters expected to clear out their desks in just 15 minutes before leaving.

X user ziaullah said that the 15 minutes ‘to pack up and go’ was a ‘brutal exit’ for the employees.

James Malsawn wrote: ‘Talk about a quick goodbye – 15 minutes to gather your stuff and you’re out.’

User felldeg added: ‘That’s just 15 minutes of notice? I guess USAID really is practicing what they preach about efficiency – in shutting down their DC office, that is. 

‘But seriously, can someone tell me why they’re not giving fired employees more time to gather their belongings? 

‘Is it a cost-cutting measure or are they trying to make a point about being nimble and adaptable in today’s fast-paced world?’

Staff will also have to certify that they do not have any official records in their possession.

They may designate another staffer to pick up their belongings, but cannot request another date or time.

Staff cannot bring guests or children to the ‘former USAID space’.

The plan revealed earlier this month is set to leave fewer than 300 staffers on the job out of what are currently 8,000 direct hires and contractors. 

They, along with an unknown number of 5,000 locally hired international staffers abroad, would run the few life-saving programs that the administration says it intends to keep going for the time being.

It was not immediately clear whether the reduction to 300 would be permanent or temporary, potentially allowing more workers to return after what the Trump administration says is a review of which aid and development programs it wants to resume.

The administration says it is taking all required care of staffers as it terminates USAID programs and aims to recall thousands of workers and their families abroad.

But some workers say they have been left in substandard medical care in posts in unstable countries, fearing for their lives.

‘Everyone says I need to wait and see what happens’ with Trump administration decisions, a USAID staffer, whose pregnancy is complicated by high-blood pressure, said in a court filing from her posting in an undisclosed country in Africa.

‘I have a due date that does not allow me to just wait and see what happens,’ the USAID staffer wrote. ‘If I cannot medevac as planned, I will be in a life-threatening situation.’

In another case, a pregnant spouse of a USAID worker was left hemorrhaging in a foreign hospital bed to await delivery, her husband said in another affidavit. 

The intervention of a U.S. senator, who was not identified in the affidavit, secured the government’s agreement to pay for a medical evacuation. 

But doctors say the approval came too late in her pregnancy for her to safely take a long series of flights back to the U.S., even with medical escort. 

Critics have also piled on the administration over the justifications for the move.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said to reporters earlier in February that USAID had spent ‘$1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbia’s workplaces; $70,000 for the production of a DEI musical in Ireland; $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia, $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru.’ 

Those claims were picked up and spread widely on social media throughout the week. 

Only the grant to a Serbian organization called Grupa Izadji was awarded by USAID. Its stated aim is to ‘to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities.’

The rest were awarded by the State Department’s Office of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. 

In 2022, it granted $70,884 to an Irish company for ‘a live musical event to promote the U.S. and Irish shared values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.’ 

A grant for $25,000 was awarded in 2021 to a university in Colombia ‘to raise awareness and increase the transgender representation’ through the production of an opera, with an additional $22,020 coming from non-federal funding. 

And $32,000 awarded in 2022 to a Peruvian organization funded ‘a tailored-made comic, featuring an LGBTQ+ hero to address social and mental health issues.’

Major media outlets are among the organizations that have been singled out with claims that are false and misleading, including The Associated Press.

The BBC, for example, was said to have received approximately $3.2 million (2.6 million pounds) during the 2023-2024 financial year. But that money didn’t go to its news operation. 

It went to BBC Media Action, an international charity that is ‘part of the BBC family,’ but editorially and financially separate from BBC News, the charity said in a statement. It accounted for about 8% of BBC Media Action’s budget that year.

‘We follow the BBC’s editorial standards and values in our support for public interest media,’ reads the statement. 

‘However, all of our funding goes to our own projects. These are completely separate from the journalism of BBC News. We have no influence over the editorial decision-making of BBC News. The BBC in the UK is mostly funded by a TV Licence fee.’

The BBC — not including BBC Media Action, which is a separate entity — also earns income from the organization’s commercial subsidiaries.

Posts shared widely across social media also falsely claimed that Politico received at least $8 million from USAID in 2024, with some posts putting that number as high as $34.3 million. That is incorrect. 

USAID did pay the news site $44,000 in subscription fees in financial years 2023 and 2024. But additional government payments came from other entities. 

Politico, in a statement to readers from CEO Goli Sheikholeslami and Editor-in-Chief John Harris, said that it is not getting a government subsidy.

The Associated Press was among the media outlets said to receive USAID funding. Although the news wire has been paid $37.5 million by other government agencies since 2008, none of that came from USAID, according to a federal government website that tracks its spending. 

AP spokeswoman Lauren Easton said that ‘the U.S. government has long been an AP customer — through both Democratic and Republican administrations. It licenses AP’s nonpartisan journalism, just like thousands of news outlets and customers around the world. It’s quite common for governments to have contracts with news organizations for their content.’