The US Is Quietly Rewiring Humanitarian Aid into Deportation Support

By Francisca Vigaud-Walsh, Director of Strategy and Advocacy at CEDA

Photo: Lisette Poole

It’s hard to keep track of the foreign policy proposals the Trump Administration has put forward in just five months. One stands out for its potential to permanently unravel what’s left of U.S. humanitarian infrastructure: a plan to turn the U.S. humanitarian apparatus into an extension of its deportation machinery.

At the center of this effort is a sweeping reorganization of the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM), an office historically tasked with protecting the rights and safety of displaced people. Under the proposal, PRM would be transformed into a backdoor support system for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The vehicle for this shift? Diverting PRM’s current funds toward initiatives that bolster DHS’s ability to carry out deportations. 

According to Congressional Notification Transmittal 25-032, the State Department intends to use PRM funds to support DHS programs focused on “removal coordination” and “voluntary return.” This shift, from providing protection to enabling removals, is diametrically opposed to the aims of U.S. humanitarian policy. It represents a fundamental betrayal of humanitarian principles. The Migration and Refugee Assistance Act was designed to provide protection and solutions for refugees and other displaced people, and it explicitly limits the use of such funds to “refugees outside the United States.” The use of MRA funds for coercive or non-consensual returns flouts decades of precedent, undermines congressional intent, and contravenes the spirit of a humanitarian account long understood to be off-limits to enforcement-driven agendas.

The Administration asserts that PRM will continue to support humanitarian efforts, yet a Reduction in Force (RIF) is expected to be implemented as early as this Friday. It would target civil servants with the technical expertise to manage humanitarian assistance awards, engage in humanitarian diplomacy, and uphold longstanding U.S. commitments to the displaced. 

Crucially, this transformation is already underway. The Administration has begun redirecting $250 million from the Migration and Refugee Assistance account to fund DHS-run “voluntary return” efforts, including cash stipends and airfare for so-called “self-deportation” programs. It’s a quiet but sweeping reallocation of humanitarian funds toward deportation logistics, one that mirrors the internal dismantling of PRM through staff cuts and reorganization. The system is being reshaped in real time.

At the heart of this pivot is a proposal to establish a new PRM “Office of Remigration.” This office would ostensibly “facilitate the voluntary return of migrants to their country of origin or legal status”—but "voluntary" is a flexible term when the only alternatives are indefinite detention or forced deportation.

The term “remigration” has its roots in far-right European anti-immigrant movements, where it has been used as a euphemism for ethnic cleansing. Its adoption into the U.S. policy lexicon is chilling. Importing this rhetoric into U.S. foreign policy sets a dangerous precedent: it normalizes xenophobic frameworks within the machinery of humanitarian aid and aligns U.S. policy with regimes that see the displaced not as people in need of protection, but as a problem to be solved through removal.

This is not just a bureaucratic reshuffle; it’s a deliberate dismantling of capacity. And it’s happening before Congress has had a chance to weigh in through the State Department reauthorization or the appropriations process. 

The implications are stark. PRM, already strained by a dramatically reduced budget and a global displacement crisis affecting over 120 million people, could see its remaining resources siphoned into enforcement programs with none of the requisite transparency, oversight, or accountability mechanisms. From Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh to Venezuelan asylum seekers in Colombia and Sudanese refugees in Chad, millions who rely on U.S. humanitarian support may be left without a safety net.

Finally, undermining PRM is a dismantling of a broader foreign policy infrastructure and its programs reflect statutory commitments and treaty obligations that go beyond emergency aid. Gutting this apparatus erodes our legal commitments and strips foreign policy of one of its most stabilizing tools.