How the Trump Admin Tried to Turn Foreign Aid Funds Into Deportation Cash

On the first day of his second-term in office, Donald Trump issued an executive order that caught many off-guard: all foreign aid would be subject to an immediate review. 

Some aid workers initially understood the order as covering future grants — tightened scrutiny, but perhaps nothing necessarily out of the ordinary for a new administration. They were wrong. The Trump administration was claiming the power to freeze all current funding; it effectively placed aid under the authority of the powerful Office of Management and Budget, soon to be led by ardent conservative movement activist and Christian nationalist Russ Vought.

Over the next year, the Trump administration would either dismantle agencies and offices that ran foreign assistance programs, shift the money towards other priorities including the support of immigration enforcement, or simply refuse to spend foreign aid money that Congress had appropriated. This involved varying levels of disregard towards Congress’ power of the purse, some of which are so extreme that they deserve a separate category: at one point, TPM found, White House adviser Stephen Miller and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem scheduled a meeting to consider ways to redirect money appropriated for USAID towards border security and deportations. That particular effort does not appear to have gone far. But consistently over the course of 2025 and into 2026, the White House has diverted resources meant for other projects — international crime prevention, for example — using them instead to support its mass deportation campaign. 

In some cases, Congress figured out what the administration was up to and attempted to reassert its authority. In other cases, clues of how far officials sought to go are just beginning to emerge, including some detailed here by TPM for the first time. Some of this information is drawn from documents obtained by watchdog group Democracy Forward via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and later provided to TPM. 

“The Administration has always worked to ensure all funds are used in a manner consistent with the President’s America first agenda, including humanitarian purposes such as helping governments disrupt criminal networks that prey on children and vulnerable families,” a White House spokesperson told TPM. “The Administration will continue lawfully implementing the President’s agenda.”

“The Biden border crisis was a humanitarian catastrophe, with millions of people abused,  trafficked, or killed, including by the flow of lethal drugs over the border. Moreover, USAID previously funded NGOs that actively enabled and fueled this catastrophe. No more,” a State Department spokesperson told TPM. “Under President Trump, this humanitarian crisis has come to an end, and the era of mass migration is over.”

“The Department has complied with requirements set out in congressional appropriations,” the spokesperson added. “As a matter of policy, we do not discuss our internal funding operations.”

Early days

The day-one executive order that remade the U.S. approach to foreign aid was titled “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid.” 

Much of it ended up being applied in a way that furthered the administration’s nativist immigration agenda. Stephen Miller, the Homeland Security Adviser and Deputy Chief of Staff for policy, played a key role. 

Miller had spent the first months of the administration leveraging influence over Noem, the records reviewed by TPM show. Former officials told TPM that Miller pushed to redirect funding towards immigration-related objectives. The two held daily calls, per a schedule from the administration’s first week. In late February, DHS Assistant Secretary for International Affairs Chris Pratt referenced a suggestion by Miller in a thread with Corey Lewandowski, the records show.  

Miller, by title, is homeland security adviser and deputy chief of staff for policy. Those positions have historically been domestic-facing roles but, former federal officials told TPM, he’s pushed officials who deal with aid and other international affairs to reorient both domestic and foreign policy towards draconian immigration enforcement. What followed involved redirecting funding from various areas towards removals. 

That took various forms — some successful, others seemingly unrealized.

The most extreme example of the administration’s monomaniacal deportation focus is arguably the Alien Enemies Act removals. On March 15, 2025, the administration invoked the wartime power to send more than 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador’s CECOT prison, known for its widespread use of torture and otherwise horrific conditions. A federal judge ordered planes carrying those removed to turn around as the deportations were taking place; officials did not follow that order, and the planes reached El Salvador. 

The CECOT detentions are an example of the reorientation of foreign aid funds. They were partly paid for by a $4.76 million payment to El Salvador from the State Department’s crime-prevention account, meant to help foreign law enforcement agencies via foreign assistance. 

On March 20, records show, a meeting took place. It involved Miller and Noem, and, per briefing notes obtained by Democracy Forward and reviewed by TPM, addressed how the Departments of State, Justice, and Defense could work on border security and mass deportations.  

The briefing memorandum, for Noem, is sparse. Much of it is redacted. But it contains one unredacted section: a heading for one of the “Key Priorities” listed in the document. It reads, “Realign Elements of Foreign Aid for Border Enforcement and Repatriation: DHS operations and other DHS-led work.”

Using USAID money for deportations was under discussion at the time the agency was destroyed, two former officials told TPM. 

In February 2025, three House Republicans introduced a bill that would reroute foreign aid funding towards deportations. Introduced by MAGA ally Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN), no action has been taken on the bill, though it showed that the idea was aired publicly even as the administration pursued it internally. 

Congressional pushback

While TPM was reporting on attempts to reroute foreign aid to deportations, several former USAID officials pointed TPM to an episode that unfolded involving an obscure account called ERMA. It stands for Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance, and was meant to be a State Department stopgap for crises that spawned large numbers of displaced people. After the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, for example, Congress added $500 million to the account to respond to the sudden flow of refugees.

The fund is unique in a few ways, experts told TPM. It’s a presidential drawdown account, meaning that the White House can spend money from it on demand. It also has transfer authorities — i.e. legal permission to move money from the State Department to the Departments of Defense and, crucially, Homeland Security. 

Congress had kept the account funded at $100 million per year. For disasters like Afghanistan, legislators made money available to the account in separate legislation. 

Last year, the Trump administration asked Congress in its annual budget request for a massive boost in funding for ERMA: $1.5 billion, with the money available for “curbing illegal migration by facilitating the voluntary return of migrants from the United States to their country of origin or legal status.” 

It was a huge sum, to be used for the administration’s self-deportation program, in which the money would have gone to detained undocumented migrants willing to accept a fee from the government to agree to be deported. 

Congress did the opposite. In the fiscal year 2026 appropriations bill it passed language limiting the ability to transfer refugee funds to other agencies without oversight, mandating consultation with Congress before moving the money. 

“Given how rapidly crises evolve on the ground, humanitarian assistance has always been more flexible than other accounts, including not requiring congressional notification. Without this flexibility, the limited support the United States provides would be slower, more politicized, and less effective in responding to urgent conditions,” a senior congressional staffer with knowledge of humanitarian aid told TPM.

However, the senior congressional staffer pointed out, “the fastest way to lose these flexibilities is to abuse them.” 

In a Congress that threw $170 billion over four years at various forms of immigration enforcement, more than many countries’ militaries, it was a small defeat for the administration. 

At other points, the Trump administration has found creative ways to evade Congress. 

NOTUS identified at least six programs or accounts in the Departments of Justice, State, and Homeland Security redirected towards immigration and removal operations in a story last month. In one instance, State Department officials recommended that the department not notify Congress that a payment be made, per a memo reviewed by the outlet. An official admitted that it was “rare” not to notify Congress about such a payment, per the memo.

Quids pro quo

Using forms of foreign aid for deportations has a certain own-the-libs appeal. It conjures up images — and a reality — of money intended for refugees from wartorn countries or meant for sacks of lifesaving food instead going to the administration’s highest-profile and most brutal priority. 

But there are other reasons why the administration may have found it easier to divert these funds away from the uses that Congress intended. Unlike most accounts in appropriations bills, many appropriations for foreign aid and humanitarian assistance accounts can largely be redirected from within an agency. It helps if the administration can argue that the new use is somehow related: it’s easier for money appropriated for a State Department foreign assistance program relating to international crime prevention, for example, to be used for deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal records. That may be a stretch, experts say, but the administration has found ways to make the argument to Congress, per NOTUS. 

Some of these appropriations don’t come with requirements to notify Congress when they are allocated or spent — a carveout to insure aid meant to help people in need can be delivered quickly and efficiently, without extra paperwork.

The Trump administration has taken advantage of the situation, using this flexibility around the appropriations language for foreign assistance to use the funds for their own agenda priorities — including deportations — instead of what appropriators had in mind when the money was authorized.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrats released a report in Feb. 2026, laying out examples of this tactic. The report detailed how the Trump administration paid millions of dollars to several countries in exchange for taking in migrants the U.S. was deporting.

In that case, money for foreign assistance was being withheld, then transferred to countries agreeing to accept migrants. It’s a hardball version of the kind of dealing that’s long been a feature of U.S. foreign policy: conditioning aid or U.S. support on a foreign country’s policy changes. In this case, what’s different is that the whole of U.S. relations with the foreign government is being subordinated to one goal: deportations. 

In an effort to combat the administration’s habit of taking advantage of loopholes placed in good faith and to seek more accountability for how federal funds are used, during the appropriations process for fiscal year 2026, congressional Democrats in some cases successfully pushed to include language that could act as guardrails and limit the administrations’ flexibility when it comes to spending appropriated foreign aid dollars.

For example, previously the administration could directly give money to another government and not be forced to notify Congress unless it was more than $10 million. In the FY 2026 appropriations bill, that threshold was brought down to $2.5 million.

“The Trump administration is hiding its decisions around remigration and pushing the limits of these funds, and now they are at risk of more stringent requirements because Congress — and American taxpayers — do not have transparency into what is being done. They are endangering the entire humanitarian enterprise because they are failing to be transparent,” the senior congressional staffer told TPM.