‘The collapse of USAID funding will come as a major blow to multiple Islamist ideological movements across the globe,’ witness Gregg Roman told NR.
The now-shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development has funneled at least $122 million in approved grants to terror-tied aid charities, including an evangelical Christian group that in 2014 facilitated a $125,000 sub-grant to a Sudanese terrorist organization linked to al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden.
USAID has long been complicit in funding humanitarian aid groups associated with designated terrorists, such as Hamas and Hezbollah. This is just one egregious example of the waste, fraud, and abuse within USAID that the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency are working to uncover.
“There’s a fox loose in the henhouse of our foreign aid system—a system intended to uplift lives abroad that instead has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to radical and terrorist-linked organizations,” Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum, said in his testimony before House Oversight’s DOGE Subcommittee on Wednesday.
The Middle East Forum published these findings in a years-long study earlier this month, as DOGE head Elon Musk started targeting USAID and its wasteful, often ideologically-driven spending.
One organization, World Vision, was given $200,000 in taxpayer funding to direct toward the Islamic Relief Agency a decade ago. Of those funds, a $125,000 sub-grant was approved by the Obama administration. A whistleblower came forward to reveal the improper relationship between the two groups.
The evangelical non-governmental organization claimed in 2018 it had no knowledge of the Islamic organization’s terrorism ties. In 2010, two members of Islamic Relief’s U.S. branch pleaded guilty to money-laundering, theft of public funds, conspiracy, and other charges. Six years earlier, the Treasury Department designated Islamic Relief as a terror-financing organization.
Despite the scandal, World Vision obtained $200 million in approved grants from USAID last year. It has received an estimated $2 billion since 2008.
Additionally, Helping Hand for Relief and Development received a $78,000 USAID grant in 2023 even after USAID’s inspector general launched an investigation into a prior grant. The group held ties to Pakistan’s Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, a designated terrorist organization that played a role in the 2008 Mumbai massacre.
Helping Hand is also partnered with the Unlimited Friends Association, a charity affiliated with Hamas and known for promoting violent antisemitism.
Another Hamas-tied group, Bayader Association for Environment and Development, received its last USAID grant on October 1, 2023, just before the October 7 terror attack on Israel. Bayader previously featured senior Hamas officials, including the son of the late Ismail Haniyeh, who orchestrated the October 7 massacre.
Other examples of aid groups involved in funding terrorists, sometimes knowingly, include the American Near East Refugee Agency, Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, and Tides Foundation.
Testifying on Capitol Hill, Roman called for proper vetting of foreign and domestic charities that require full transparency and recommended the subcommittee file a criminal referral to the Department of Justice for USAID’s failure to prevent terrorists from getting their hands on American taxpayer dollars. The problem amounts to a national security threat, he said.
“This is a problem that began under the Obama administration and was exacerbated under the Biden administration,” Roman testified. “It’s a problem that has been brewing across both of these administrations — by a bureaucracy so insulated it can’t always tell teachers from terrorists.”
Roman noted how his organization has been repeatedly “stonewalled” by the entrenched bureaucracy at USAID. In 2023, the Middle East Forum requested information from USAID on a grant benefiting the Hamas-aligned Unlimited Friends Association in Gaza. Two years later, the conservative think tank still hasn’t received an adequate response to its Freedom of Information Act request.
“Since that FOIA, our near-monthly regular check-ins with USAID FOIA officers have led only to imposed additional delays,” Roman told National Review. “The government’s most recent promised deadline to provide a response, set for early February, was once again ignored by USAID officials.”
The congressional hearing came as DOGE’s waste-cutting efforts at USAID face court challenges for halting hundreds of millions in foreign assistance funds. On Tuesday, a judge ordered the Trump administration to resume spending on foreign aid by Wednesday one minute before midnight.
The Trump administration noted compliance with the two-day deadline was an arduous task, considering USAID owes overseas organizations nearly $2 billion in payments that normally take weeks to process. The administration requested a stay on the order.
Reports indicate USAID will fold into the State Department if the Trump administration gets its way. While shutting down USAID provides complications, the Middle East Forum believes it is necessary to stop funding terrorists.
“Within our limited scope focused on the defunding of international Islamism and its enablers,” Roman told NR, “the collapse of USAID funding will come as a major blow to multiple Islamist ideological movements across the globe.”