A US shutdown of foreign aid is starting to have devastating impacts around the world. Health programs and even military assistance are now paused in many countries. In Latin America, some fear that the aid freeze could hurt economic programs and encourage more people to migrate to the United States. The post USAID freeze could lead to instability in Latin America and encourage migration appeared first on The World from PRX.
Zenaida Garcia makes birthday cakes for a living in her small apartment.
Recently, she was involved in two projects funded by the US government that gave Venezuelan migrants in Colombia funds to start their own businesses and provided them with personal finance courses.
Garcia used the money to buy a fridge, an oven and an electric blender. That helped expedite the baking process, and now she can make around 40 cakes each weekend for her bakery in Soacha, a working-class suburb of Bogota.
“My business is growing, and my life has changed,” Garcia said as she prepared a chocolate cake filled with coffee cream in her two-bedroom apartment. “I used to do all this by hand, but now I can blend the ingredients in five minutes.”
Garcia’s project helped more than 40,000 Venezuelan migrants in Colombia start their own businesses over the past three years, incentivizing many to stay in Colombia instead of heading to the United States.
But this program has now been suspended, along with hundreds of aid projects funded by the US worldwide, as the Trump administration implements a three-month-long freeze on foreign aid. Analysts fear this could create instability in the region and prompt more people to try and migrate to the United States.
While the Trump administration says it has suspended foreign aid as part of its efforts to reign in wasteful government spending, some policy analysts say that foreign aid makes up less than 1% of the federal government’s budget — and that cutting it could work against US interests.
In Latin America, the US spent more than $2 billion in aid projects in 2023, the last year for which data is available.
The money went mostly to security programs, economic development projects and initiatives that help independent media outlets and nongovernmental organizations battle corruption.
“A lot of the funding that has been provided to Latin America, in recent years, is looking at how you address the factors that drive people from their homes,” said Maureen Meyer, a specialist on security and migration at the Washington Office on Latin America, a research group in Washington.
“And cutting that off goes against the US interest of addressing migration and supporting countries as they receive their own citizens,” she said.
In 2023, about a quarter of US aid to Latin America was spent on security programs, such as projects to modernize police forces and local courts, so that Latin American governments could combat drug trafficking groups and other threats.
This kind of aid is also in limbo now.
“For the criminals, there are now more opportunities to operate and expand because law enforcement responses are further strained,” said Bram Ebus, an expert on organized crime at the International Crisis Group.
He explained that law enforcement institutions in the region have struggled to keep up with the budgets that criminal groups get from the drug trade or the illicit gold trade. And without US support, law enforcement agencies in the region are less likely to provide their officers with adequate salaries and logistical support.
“We know that organized crime is able to corrupt law enforcement officials, judges and maybe even army coronels,” Ebus said.
In Colombia, 18 helicopters that were used for anti-narcotics operations were grounded by police this month, because they relied on the US for fuel and maintenance.
And projects that sought to clear landmines from rural areas have also been suspended.
Meanwhile, officials in some areas of the country say they will now struggle to provide basic services to migrants.
In Maicao, a town in the north of Colombia where 15% of the population is made up of Venezuelan migrants, human rights ombudsman Ever Quintana says that US aid was helping to provide those living in shanty towns with drinking water.
Projects funded by the United States and administered by several international organizations were also helping to provide migrants with medical care, alleviating some of the burden on overcrowded and underfunded local hospitals.
“The social impact of these projects was huge,” Quintana said in a phone interview. “And now many will shut down within a month.”
The Trump administration has told organizations that implement aid programs that they can apply for waivers to get their operations started again, especially when it comes to life-saving humanitarian aid.
But hundreds of employees at USAID, the agency that administers these funds, have been put on leave by the administration, making it even harder to get the aid programs running again.
Zenaida Garcia, the small business owner in Bogota, said she already completed her training in programs funded by USAID.
But she’s sad for those who will now no longer be able to benefit from them.
“It’s not just about the money,” she said. “They gave us hope, and made us feel like important people.”
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