As Elon Musk’s DOGE team continues to rampage through United States federal agencies, Trump administration efforts to eliminate the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) seem to be furthest along. The impacts of the agency’s dismantling on humanitarian relief, public health, and human rights work, combined with the wider 90-day State Department pause on foreign aid payments, are already far reaching and severe around the world. Sources tell WIRED that the situation is also impacting anti-human trafficking work targeted at addressing forced labor compounds that fuel digital fraud like investment scams.
The funding cuts and pauses have immediately made it harder for people to safely escape scam compounds, according to half a dozen sources working to combat scams and trafficking. The cuts have also shrunk services that house and care for human trafficking victims and are limiting investigatory work into criminal groups. After just days of funding disruptions, sources say that the cuts have caused “chaos” for staff working to help survivors on a daily basis. Some organizations have already gone dark, and relief workers add that the withdrawal of services could embolden the criminal groups behind the fraud.
“It is a really, really bad situation,” says one person working in the antiscam sector in Southeast Asia. The individual, as with several sources in this story, requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the work and ongoing changing situation. They say small grassroot organizations, which may only have a handful of staff each but help identify and work with trafficking victims, have been widely affected. “This pause will mean that organizations that essentially shifted their work from different forms of trafficking to looking at scamming compounds will cease to exist,” they say.
USAID and the US State Department did not immediately respond to questions from WIRED about the situation.
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Are you a current or former USAID or State Department employee or a worker familiar with anti-human-trafficking efforts? We’d like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact Matt Burgess securely on Signal at mattburgess.20 and Lily Hay Newman at +1 (347) 722-1347.
