“ Tearing up: USAID employees eliminate offices after DOGE layoffs

On Thursday, several American international development agencies eliminated their offices at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, saying that they were discouraged after the Elon Musk Government Ministry of Elon Musk or placed them on leave.

“The more I talk about it, the more I want to cry,” said Amanda, who worked in science and technology at USAID and did not want to share her family name for fear of remuneration, while she was waiting to enter the building to get her business. “It’s heartbreaking.”

Many staff members said they had received an email late Sunday Sunday, informing them that they were placed on administrative leave and that was then assigned to 15 minutes of windows to enter the building and bring together their personal effects. Around the world, 4,080 USAID workers were put on leave on Monday, and there was a “strength reduction” of 1,600 additional workers, a spokesman for the State Department told the Associated Press.

Those who picked up their personal effects on Thursday were encouraged by hundreds of friends, family and supporters outside as they left the building with boxes of bankers, bags and reusable suitcases.

“It seems deeply disrespectful towards workers, towards people who devote themselves to improving things in the world, which makes things better elsewhere so that they do not come here, so the problems do not come here,” said Melissa, who has not shared his family name either, said the short period they have been attributed.

Previously, she worked on democracy programs in Ukraine and anti-corruption efforts.

“I mean and we are everyone, no,” she added. “We have children to take care of, we have parents to take [care] Who aged and we all have difficulties with that too. “”

Caitlin Harwood, mother of a 4 year old girl and a 9 month old child, said that she was “worried” for her next pay check and does not know the next step for her.

Office of the campaign office with USAID for Mozambique, she told ABC News that even if she believed that the government could be more effective, she disputes the way the Musk team did.

“I think there is a way to proceed. I don’t think anyone who would have been as terrified as they were now if they had passed and said we were going to have a program exam,” said Harwood.

“So it’s not effective, and it actually costs the US people to billions of dollars in waste, wasted drugs,” added Harwood.

Ben Thompson worked in communications before being dismissed by the USAID and said he was under a “communications freezing” since the first days of the Trump administration.

“Powerful and evil men target many good people who have devoted their lives to something bigger than them, which is something that someone like Elon [Musk] I cannot understand, “Thompson told journalists.” It is clearly not a question of waste, fraud and abuse of the government. He does not cross a fine tooth comb – he demolishes our institutions to have fun. “”

Samantha Power, the administrator of the USAID under former president Joe Biden, entered the Ronald Reagan building, which houses the agency’s headquarters, and spoke with workers on Thursday morning.

“What is done is one of the greatest blunders in the history of American foreign policy. This is the one that the generations of Americans will go back,” Power in ABC News told. “But the way it is done, cruelty, savagery, ruthless soothing, is an outrage, and it should, whatever you think of foreign assistance – to treat American officials who want to do anything more than to serve their country, serve the American people, to treat them with the way in which they are treated should not relax and horrify us all.”

Power said she hoped that the workers in the USAID “remember the life you have touched.”

Some supporters gathered outside had traveled hours to be in Washington to encourage workers leaving the building.

Diana Putman told ABC News that she had led 3 and a half hours to go to Pennsylvania Washington that morning “because I had to be here to support my colleagues.”

Putman retired from the USAID in 2022 after spending his entire career in the agency. She followed her traces of her father, who started working with Usaid in March 1962 – only five months after her foundation.

“USAID is literally the pre -eminent development agency in the world, and our soft power has noted it, so much around the world in the past 60 years,” said Putman. “The positive face of the American people will no longer be seen in the world.”

When the supporters arrived, a black ribbon had been placed on the name of Usaid on the panels outside the Ronald Reagan building. Kate Parsons, a worker who was dismissed last week from the USAID office for humanitarian aid, snatched the band. She said that she would have come to support her colleagues.

“I don’t know who put this band, but I know that USAID is still there. We are still there,” said ABC News.

“Only Congress can close the USAID – it is a government agency. The current leadership is trying to dismantle it. They try to do it so quickly and so negligently that people do not notice or that people cannot stop it, but they have not yet dismissed,” added Parsons. “This fight is not yet made.”

USAID workers said they wanted the public to be proud of the work they have done.

“We love the American people. We are here to serve. This is what the bureaucrats are,” said Harwood, a mother of two young children, when he was asked about his message to the public. “We are non -supporters. We had a mission. We were so proud to serve him. And we hope we made you proud.”