USAID Official Warns Block of Foreign Aid Will Cost Lives, Then Says He’s Been Put on Leave

Nicholas Enrich is USAID’s acting assistant administrator for global health.

A senior official with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in an email on March 2 warned that the Trump administration’s dismantling of the agency will result in unnecessary deaths—only to email his staff less than 30 minutes later to say that he had been placed on leave.

Nicholas Enrich, USAID’s acting assistant administrator for global health, in a seven-page memorandum shared with staff members on Sunday, said “political leadership” had made it impossible to deliver lifesaving humanitarian assistance around the world, contradicting assurances from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that such aid would continue despite President Donald Trump and presidential adviser Elon Musk’s cost-cutting campaign.

Twenty minutes later, Enrich sent another email, saying that he had “just received notification that I have been placed on administrative leave, effective immediately.”

USAID declined to comment. The State Department and Enrich did not respond to inquiries.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), ranking member of the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee, said on the social media platform X that the action against Enrich was “blatant retaliation against a civil servant because he dared to do his job.”

Trump, after taking office in January, paused foreign aid for 90 days. The State Department then began reviewing all foreign assistance programs to make sure they were consistent with American interests.

Rubio announced in late January that he was issuing a waiver from the pause for life-saving aid, including medical services and food.

The blocked USAID programs include efforts to help contain a deadly Ebola outbreak in Uganda that had killed two and infected 10, Enrich said in the memo.

“This will no doubt result in preventable death, destabilization, and threats to national security on a massive scale,” Enrich wrote.

Musk, who has been leading the Department of Government Efficiency’s efforts to cut government waste, told a recent Cabinet meeting that the team had made mistakes, including canceling an Ebola prevention contract.

Musk, however, said the mistake had been fixed.

“When we make mistakes, we’ll fix it very quickly,” he said, adding later that “we restored Ebola prevention immediately.”

A State Department spokesperson previously told The Epoch Times in an email, “This is a process. If errors are made, they will be flagged and corrected as needed, while striving to do what’s best for the American people.”

In another memo, Enrich estimated that pausing lifesaving aid to Ukraine would cause between 71,000 and 166,000 additional malaria deaths, a nearly 40 percent increase; an increase of between 28 percent and 32 percent in tuberculosis cases worldwide; and up to 28,000 cases of emerging infectious diseases such as Ebola.

Enrich said that political appointees have made it impossible to approve payments for programs that fit the waiver and alleged that since Feb. 14, none have been approved.

The memos came after officials said in court filings that it was eliminating nearly 5,800 USAID awards, or about 90 percent of contracts and grants, as well as about 45 percent of State Department grants. Rubio determined the eliminated agreements were “inconsistent with the national interests and foreign policy of the United States,” an official said in one of the filings.

Reuters contributed to this report.