The new guy in charge of USAID doesn't believe in foreign aid

REUTERS/Brian Snyder

The new deputy director of foreign aid at the U.S. State Department who is effectively overseeing what’s left of the USAID is a staunch supporter of restrictionist immigration policy who also takes a dim view of foreign aid.

The appointment of John A. Zadrozny to lead the State Department office responsible for supervising and setting the strategic direction of foreign assistance program has attracted little notice, with no formal announcement or White House press release heralding his arrival.

The new role was revealed in an FAQ document approved by Pete Marocco, the deputy director of USAID stating that effective Feb. 24, Zadrozny was on the job. The FAQ stated that all requests for exceptions to the pause in foreign aid spending should be addressed to Zadrozny. The document was filed in federal court by the government on Feb. 26 in response to a request for a temporary restraining order filed by humanitarian groups that had relied on funds from USAID to carry out their missions.


Zadrozny is a longtime ally of Stephen Miller, who was the architect of President Trump’s hardline immigration policies in his first term and now serves as White House deputy chief of staff. Zadrozny previously served on the White House Domestic Policy Council, where he reported to Miller.

Zadrozny declined a request for an interview for this story through a State Department spokesperson.

Following his stint at the Domestic Policy Council in 2017, Zadrozny moved on to the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, where he worked closely with Miller to implement Trump’s restrictionist immigration policy. During the first Trump administration, Zadrozny pushed for policy changes to severely curtail the number of refugees accepted by the United States at the State Department and later U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Department of Homeland Security.


Following Trump’s electoral loss to Joe Biden in 2020, Zadrozny served as director of the Center for Homeland Security and Immigration at the America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit founded by Miller. Zadrozny was a contributor to the State Department chapter of Project 2025, and served on the Department of Homeland Security landing team for Trump’s second term.

During his time at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during the first Trump administration, Zadrozny’s argued for keeping the number of refugees low because of security concerns, according to a 2019 report by Politico. The push by Zadrozny and others in the Miller camp ran into resistance from others in the administration such as former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who argued in a memo to Trump that “a failure to honor our commitments to those who have supported the U.S. in combat would undermine our diplomatic and military efforts to protect the Homeland and support key aspects of the president’s national security strategy by making it more difficult to sustain the support of partners elsewhere.”

Mattis also argued that “the U.S. military also reaps a higher enlistment level from immigrant families than native-born,” adding that “there is also a positive second-order effect” of allowing up to 45,000 refugees per year to settle in the United States.


Zadrozny expressed opposition to the Biden administration’s resettlement of Afghan refugees following the U.S. military withdrawal from the country in September 2021.

“The reality is a lot of dangerous people are fleeing the Taliban,” he told the far-right news network Newsmax at the time. “And this administration is putting them all on planes and sending them to a community near you.”

At the same time that he favored a restrictionist immigration policy, Zadrozny’s public comments in 2021 suggested he was also not a fan of foreign assistance, which has been traditionally seen as a force for stabilization that helps reduce migration pressures.


In June 2021, as migration from the so-called Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador was surging, Zadrozny told another far-right network, One American News: “There’s probably a way to help them that doesn’t involve slathering foreign aid on them.”

Without providing specifics, Zadrozny said he would recommend helping the countries “develop 21st century economies on their own.” But the Biden administration, he charged, just wanted to “drop millions and millions of Americans’ hard-earned dollars on these three countries, and it won’t have any result.”

Even as the FAQ directed USAID and State Department employees to address requests for exceptions to Zadrozny, Marocco said in a declaration filed in court on Wednesday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had already completed a review of USAID financial awards and had determined which to terminate and which to retain. Marocco said termination letters would be processed in the next 24 to 48 hours, with final notifications sent out by the end of the week. The administration wound up terminating almost 5,800 awards, Marocco said, keeping only about 500.

“In ordinary times, the government recognizes the importance of foreign-assistance funding to our national interests,” the humanitarian groups wrote in a filing in federal court on Feb. 27. “In ordinary times, the government would not gleefully try to dismantle a government agency overnight, fire American workers without cause or notice, or jeopardize the very existence of businesses and nonprofits that have for decades provided programming aimed at preventing starvation, disease and death, and employ thousands of Americans.”

Early on the morning of Feb. 27, according to the filing, the skeleton staff that remained at USAID received an email from the acting senior procurement executive.

“As you are aware, today USAID issued termination notices for a large number of awards,” the email read. “These awards were identified by the Front Office after a full review of USAID obligations and programs that were personally reviewed and approved for termination by Secretary Rubio and PTDO Deputy Administrator Marocco. We will be sharing a full list of awards terminated with additional details soon.


“We understand that some of these awards may have been for essential services, which the Front Office would like to turn back on,” the email continued. “We need your immediate input on any awards that may have been terminated that contain essential services related to the safety, security and operations of USAID staff.”

Jordan Green is a North Carolina-based investigative reporter at Raw Story, covering domestic extremism, efforts to undermine U.S. elections and democracy, hate crimes and terrorism. Prior to joining the staff of Raw Story in March 2021, Green spent 16 years covering housing, policing, nonprofits and music as a reporter and editor at Triad City Beat in North Carolina and Yes Weekly. He can be reached at jordan@rawstory.com. More about Jordan Green.