They Came for Us: A Dispatch from the Wreckage of USAID
A Foreign Service Officer Speaks Out on the Collapse of America’s Moral Engine—and What It Means to Be Left Behind
Submitted to The Last Mile With USAID by a currently serving USAID Foreign Service Officer. Identity withheld for protection. Lightly formatted for clarity; otherwise unedited.
Everything is a rabbit hole. I didn’t create any of them. I didn’t ask for any of them. But here we are.
This is what happens when an administration acts without strategy, without foresight—forget empathy. Forget even basic regard for the people who keep the damn thing running.
I love my job.
I’ve built a career around one of the longest-standing pillars of U.S. foreign policy. If the administration had decided, lawfully and transparently, that USAID no longer served its agenda—and shut it down accordingly—I would have accepted that. I would’ve grieved it, yes. But I would’ve respected the decision.
That’s not what happened. Instead, they came for us. They broke the law. They lied.
And they left more than 3,000 of us to pick through the debris.
By February, everything was breaking. Systems stopped functioning. Answers disappeared. And while “bureaucratic turmoil” may sound like noise to people in D.C., for those of us overseas, it meant our lives were suddenly, dangerously upended.
Do I have to move out of my house? Will my kids lose their school? Where do I go?
What happens to our belongings? Can I at least take my pet with me? And what about the things you don’t put in briefing memos?
My spouse is pregnant. My father is sick. My child gets specialized services that aren’t replaceable.
You can’t just pull the plug on people’s lives and expect order on the other side. But that’s what happened.
And now, somehow, we’re expected to offboard ourselves.
To finish up “properly.” To track down final paychecks with locked-out systems. To do our jobs… after being fired.
I used to wake up excited—genuinely—to serve my country.
Now I wake up wondering what country does this to its own.
Postscript
The comments are open.
Whether you’re a federal employee, a member of USAID, a colleague, a family member, a friend, or someone in a community touched by this work—your voice matters. If you’ve witnessed the impact, lived the consequences, or simply want to stand in solidarity, speak freely. This space is yours, too.
The silent devastation unfolding across USAID is not just bureaucratic—it is human. Beneath the headlines and hearings are careers shattered, families displaced, and lives thrown into chaos. These were not faceless federal workers. They were professionals of the highest caliber—Foreign Service officers, civil servants, and foreign service nationals—who devoted their lives to advancing the ideals America once claimed to stand for: freedom of expression, democratic governance, a free press, and justice for the marginalized.
They were apolitical by design and by discipline. They served under Republican and Democratic administrations alike. They operated in war zones, fragile democracies, and communities scarred by poverty and persecution. And they did so not for recognition, but because they believed in something larger than themselves—the idea that American power, when used wisely, could lift rather than crush, heal rather than exploit.
These were people who missed birthdays and funerals, who gave up proximity to their own families to help others keep theirs together. Many excelled in fields where they could have earned far more elsewhere. But they chose public service. They chose purpose.
And now they are being ridiculed. Dismissed. Lied about. Stripped of jobs, homes, and basic dignity by an administration that has weaponized misinformation and shown open contempt for the truth. The emotional toll is immeasurable. Some have suffered in silence. Others have collapsed under the weight of it. And still, too few Americans know what’s happening—or what we’re losing.
This story is not just about USAID. It is about what it means when a country begins to punish its best people for doing their jobs with integrity. It is about what happens when loyalty to facts is recast as betrayal. And it is about what we owe the public servants who held the line, right up until the moment their country let go.
You are 100% right—so many of us served in places where just showing up meant risking everything. And our local colleagues/FSN? They put their lives on the line every day because they believed in the mission just as much as we did.
That kind of trust, earned in places most Americans will never see, meant something.
USAID didn’t just run programs. It built something real.