Foreign Aid Terminated, Migrants At Guantánamo, Legal Challenges To Federal Firings

0:00Hey, 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. You should have an L.A. one. Unique New York.

0:20This is my process, Michelle. I know. I'm totally into it. All right. We 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.

0:47Two Venezuelan men who were detained at Guantanamo for weeks tell 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.

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2:04And you can take the time pursuing your passions. Time once spent sorting and waiting, folding and queuing, now spent challenging and innovating and pushing your way to greatness. So pick up that Irish flute or those calligraphy pens or the daunting Beef Wellington recipe card and leave the laundry to rinse. Rinse. It's time to be great. This message comes from Dell Technologies. The new Dell PC with Intel Core Ultra helps you fast forward through busy work, leaving more time for U-Time. Get a new Dell PC at dell.com slash ai dash pc. The Trump administration is terminating nearly all foreign assistance programs run by the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID.

2:51The 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, Fama, 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 The same process has happened over at the State Department, where most foreign assistant grants, around 4 ,100, have been cut.

3:39The 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 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.

4:17So 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.

5:03Also, 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. 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.

5:45And 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 NPR's global health correspondent, Fatma Tanis. Thank you very much. Thank you.

6:18Beatings, 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. Mayfred Durán Arape had been in detention for about 18 months, most of that time in El Paso, Texas. He says, he does have a criminal record.

6:50While he was there, he was convicted of aggravated assault of a federal officer. The other person I talked to was Joyner Purroy Roldan. 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 Durán Arape and Puroiro Lantomi, the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, were not allowed to call an attorney.

7:26So they held a five-day hunger strike. At one point, they all blocked the cameras inside their cell so they could catch the guard's attention. And one of them, Durán Arape, also kicked on the cell store 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 Arapé says he tried to die by suicide twice and he provided us with photos of injuries to his arms, wrists and hands. Burroy Roland, the other man, alleges they did not have enough food.

8:09And 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 Durán Arapé's claims. She says the detainees 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.

8:56But 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 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. Munir Ahmed is a professor at Yale Law School and represented a Guantanamo prisoner for three years.

9:30He 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 a man detained in Guantanamo. Okay, that's NPR's Sergio Martinez Beltran. Thank you very much. You're welcome. And remember, if you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

10:12Today, 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.

10:45These 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.

11:17So remind us 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.

12:03President 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.

12:41So 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. OK, 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.

13:16Here'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 A, 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.

13:47So we may continue to see litigation there. All right. That's NPR's Andrea Hsu. Thanks a lot. You're welcome.

13:57And that's a first for Thursday, February 27th. I'm E. Martinez. 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 news 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, Shanna Yukoninoff, Jenea 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. Join us again tomorrow.

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