Trump's foreign aid freeze guts grassroots groups helping migrants in Latin America
MEXICO CITY — A busy shelter for migrants in southern Mexico has been left without a doctor. A program to provide mental health support for LGBTQ+ youth fleeing Venezuela was disbanded. In Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Guatemala, so-called 'Safe Mobility Offices' where migrants can apply to enter the U.S. legally have shuttered.
Barely a week into Donald Trump's new administration, his order to halt U.S. foreign assistance is having a profound effect on an issue that propelled him to the White House: migration.
Across Latin America, grassroots organizations that assist migrants have been gutted, the already perilous trek northward has become more confusing and the future of programs to root out the violence, poverty and human rights abuses that has driven historic levels of migration in recent years are hanging by a thread.
Trump, within hours of taking office Jan. 20, ordered a sweeping 90-day freeze on most U.S. foreign assistance disbursed through the State Department. The decision immediately halted thousands of U.S.-funded humanitarian, development and security programs worldwide, forcing U.S. aid organizations and partners in the field to slash hundreds of aid workers.
The United States is the world's largest source of foreign assistance by far, although several European countries allocate a much bigger share of their budgets. While aid to Africa dwarfs the roughly $2 billion that Latin America receives annually, the Western Hemisphere has long been a spending priority of both Democratic and Republican administrations.
The region is closely tied to the U.S. through trade and migration as well as the flow of narcotics. And the rising influence of China and Russia in recent years has only enhanced the strategic importance of what used to be referred to, disparagingly, as 'Washington's backyard.'
It's a message that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is likely to reinforce when starting Saturday he visits Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic in his first official overseas trip.
Trump has made it a priority to deter migrants from entering the U.S. illegally and many of the aid programs he halted are funded through the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, which provides humanitarian assistance to those fleeing persecution, crisis, or violence.
One such beneficiary is the Peace Oasis of the Holy Spirit Amparito shelter in the southern Mexican city of Villahermosa. The shelter has been treading water for months as Mexican authorities — under pressure from the U.S. to stem migration flows — have dumped migrants rounded up throughout the country.
The aid freeze dealt another blow, forcing the charitable organization that runs the facility to fire its only doctor as well as a social worker and child psychologist.
In the days since Trump's order, the shelter has been appealing to the Mexican government for alternate funding for programs managed by the United Nations to pay for flights and bus rides to Mexico's southern border with Guatemala for migrants who want to return home. Currently, four families from Honduras, Ecuador and El Salvador are stranded.
'The crisis is only going to worsen,' the shelter said in a statement. 'The most affected will be the population we serve.'
Some 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) away from Villahermosa, in the Colombian capital of Bogota, aid workers are also scrambling.
The city is a major hub for the more than 7 million Venezuelans who have fled economic collapse and abuse under Nicolás Maduro's increasingly authoritarian rule. Colombia is also the starting point for the more than 800,000 migrants — the majority Venezuelan — who have set out the past two years on the dangerous trek northward through once impenetrable Darien Gap connecting Central and South America on their way to the U.S.
Among the most marginalized migrant groups are LGBTQ+ youth, who suffer significantly higher rates of psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. The Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley, for the past year has been readying a U.S.-funded project to provide mental health support to LGBTQ+ teenagers, from Venezuela as well Colombians internally displaced by decades of armed conflict.
Leila Younes, a Lebanese gender specialist, had just arrived in Bogota to launch the project when she saw the devastating email with the stop-work order by the State Department. After breaking the news to local partners, she immediately returned home — and now the Human Rights Center is urgently seeking $300,000 to continue the research
'We spent a year preparing with our partners, and overnight, we were told to stop,' said Younes. 'No transition, no time to secure other funding.'
Although the White House only paused humanitarian assistance for 90 days pending further review, Younes said she's under no illusion the work — and a sister project in Poland among Ukrainian youth fleeing the war with Russia — will resume. Trump on the campaign trail repeatedly blasted transgender youth and has issued sweeping orders instructing the federal government to terminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
'This isn't just a funding cut—it's part of a rollback on LGBTQI+ rights,' said Younes.
The first Trump administration funded several programs by Colombia, Ecuador and Peru to integrate the Venezuelan diaspora as well as those by Costa Rica to resettle opponents of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. The aid aligned closely with Trump's foreign policy goals to isolate anti-democratic governments and helped discourage migrants from heading to the U.S., said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.
'We're likely to see much of the foreign assistance in the region understood through a migration lens,' said Selee. 'That means stopping funding for programs that support migrants in transit but perhaps increasing funding for efforts to integrate returned migrants and those already living in other countries in the region.'
What is less likely to resume, says Selee, is foreign aid attacking the root causes of migration — a priority, at least initially, of the Biden administration. Trump has also suspended offices opened by Biden in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Guatemala where migrants could apply for asylum and other legal pathways to enter the U.S. instead of trekking to the border.
Traditionally, U.S. funding in Latin America has been channeled to support everything from child health nutrition, legal reform and press freedom. By far the biggest chunk funds security assistance to combat gangs, eradicate illegal crops and strengthen the rule of law.
Liliana Ayalde, a former American ambassador to Brazil and Paraguay, said long term investments in state-building like the more than $10 billion spent on 'Plan Colombia' since 2000 generate enormous goodwill even if it is difficult to measure the number of people who chose not to uproot as a result of such assistance.
'Trust isn't something you can turn on and off in a conflict zone,' said Ayalde, who started her diplomatic career at the U.S. Agency for International Development and now serves on the board of two non-profit organizations who also saw their funding cut. 'Partners aren't going to trust the U.S. again if they don't feel safe and think we're in it for the long haul.'
That may good news for China, Washington's top adversary for influence in Latin America. As Latin America has faded from the U.S. foreign policy agenda since the end of the Cold War, China has made deep inroads through billions in infrastructure investment and no-string attached lending.
'Champagne bottles are uncorking right now in Beijing,' said Adam Isacson, who has studied foreign aid trends for years and directs the defense oversight program at the Washington Office on Latin America. 'It's really hard for the U.S. to compete with a geopolitical rival when we're disarming unilaterally.'
—
Goodman reported from Miami. AP reporter Sonia Perez in Guatemala City and Astrid Suarez en Bogota, Colombia contributed to this report.
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