The White House has installed Peter Marocco as head of a small independent international development agency, part of a broader push by Donald Trump and Elon Musk to dramatically reduce US foreign aid.
Marocco, a Trump loyalist who presided over the administration’s evisceration of foreign aid programs at USAid and the state department, was placed in charge of the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) on Friday, after the White House fired the foundation’s president and CEO, Sara Aviel, according to a letter sent by the chair of the agency’s board of directors and reviewed by the Guardian.
The White House also moved to terminate the agency’s bipartisan board of directors and appoint Marocco as the sole board member and chairman, said an employee at the Inter-American Foundation, who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.
By Monday evening, most of the agency’s 37 staffers had been placed on paid administrative leave effective immediately, the employee said. Two former employees confirmed the moves.
Trump last month ordered the federal government to “eliminate to the maximum extent” the functions of IAF and three other independent agencies. But congressional Democrats as well as the agency’s board chairman accused the White House of exceeding its authority by attempting to shut down operations at the agency, which was established by Congress in 1969 to fund community development projects in Latin America and the Caribbean.
“We do not consider the assignment of Peter Marocco to the role of board chairman, sent via email to the IAF Chief Operating Office on February 28, 2025, to be a valid appointment as required by IAF’s enabling statute,” Eddy Arriola, the Senate-confirmed chair of the agency’s board, wrote in a letter sent to White House officials, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and several members of Congress on Sunday.
In the letter, Arriola said that the agency’s governance was to remain “unaltered” and instructed Aviel to “deny access to IAF’s systems and files to anyone outside the organization”. Actions taken by Marocco “while improperly designated should be voided”, he said.
But the White House ignored the directive.
On Monday, Marocco and members of Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) arrived at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. When the meeting ended, staff received an email that made it official: Marocco was now in charge, the employee said.
The Doge team members, which included Nate Cavanaugh and Ethan Shaotran, remained in the office for several more hours, after requesting access to the IAF database as well as the names and emails of the organization’s grantees, according to the employee and a person familiar with the situation.
IAF has 425 active projects as of October 2024. According to the worker, all local contractors were cancelled and grantees have received notifications of terminations.
On Tuesday, Doge posted on its “wall of receipts” that it had cancelled several grants at the agency, citing claimed savings from cancellations, though many of those grants were multi-year grants already partially paid out and large portions were funded by counterpart organizations.
Neither the White House nor the state department returned requests for comment.
American Federation of Government Employees Local 2211, the union representing IAF employees, said it was currently exploring legal options. Workers at the agency unionized in September 2024.
Since Trump signed the 19 February executive order, titled commencing the reduction of the federal bureaucracy, staff at the agency have been bracing for the worst while remaining hopeful that longstanding bipartisan support for their work might help persuade the administration to spare it.
“Our programs have continued to demonstrate their important impact of addressing root causes of illegal migration and supporting job creation,” the IAF employee said. “Without the IAF, I think you really do remove one of the few cost-effective tools to keep people in their home communities.”
Marocco, director of foreign assistance at the state department, has led the Trump administration’s efforts to effectively end foreign aid. Before his appointment, Marocco was a Dallas-based conservative political activist who made appearances on podcasts falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. He reportedly accompanied Doge officials when they first entered USAid headquarters in January 2025.
In a statement on Saturday, US senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat of New Hampshire and the ranking member of the US Senate foreign relations committee, decried the administration’s attempt to dismantle IAF as well as the United States African Development Foundation, an independent agency created in 1980 to support grassroots groups and small enterprises that serve marginalized communities in Africa.
“President’s Trump attempt to bypass the law and install his unconfirmed loyalist as an Acting Chair of the Boards of both the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) and the United States African Development Foundation (USADF) as a means to terminate their programs and their staff is unlawful and unacceptable,” Shaheen said.
A person familiar with the situation at USADF said Marocco had assumed control over the agency along with IAF over the weekend. A spokesman for the agency did not immediately respond.
On Tuesday, the IAF website was taken offline.
Republicans have remained largely silent as Trump and Musk eviscerate the country’s foreign aid sector.
Several Democratic members of Congress, including Senators Tim Kaine and Cory Booker, and congresspersons Joaquin Castro and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, wrote a letter to the White House on 19 February opposing Trump’s executive order to eliminate the agency.
“Only an act of Congress – not an executive action – can dissolve or eliminate the IAF,” the letter stated. “Any attempt to unilaterally dismantle the Foundation through executive action violates the law and exceed the constitutional limits of executive authority.”
Andrew Roth contributed reporting from Washington
