When Democrats rallied this past week in protest over the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development, one Democrat in the crowd likely understood the impact disbanding the agency could have better than the rest.

“Our involvement in the food security program and the refugee programs spans a 60-year period of our life,” Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., told Spectrum News, reflecting on the work he and his wife Patti began shortly after graduating college from the University of California Berkeley. Garamendi, who was an NFL prospect, decided instead to follow Patti, whom he proposed to during their senior year of college, to Ethiopia in the late 1960s as part of the Peace Corps.

“We were assigned to a very remote village in Ethiopia, [and] part of our work there was one of the specific programs that the newly formed USAID, formed by [President John F.] Kennedy a couple of years before was in effect, and that was the process of eradicating smallpox around the world,” Garamendi recalled. “There was a team from the United States that was working in Ethiopia, and we spent a full month working on vaccination programs in that rural part of Ethiopia. Ultimately, it proved to be successful.”

The Peace Corps is not a part of USAID, but the two agencies work closely together on humanitarian missions across the globe.

It was not the last time the Garamendis would go to Africa on a humanitarian mission. They would return a few decades later, in the mid-1980s, to help when famine struck Ethiopia.

“There was precious little food available, and a limited number of people were able to access it. But once again, it was USAID providing the security, the food that was necessary to sustain at least part of the population.”

Rep. John Garamendi and his wife, Patti, in Ethiopia during their time in the Peace Corps. (Courtesy of Rep. John Garamendi)

Garamendi became emotional as he recalled a poem he wrote during his time at the camp about a woman who was picking up every spare kernel of wheat that had fallen from trucks carrying USAID bags of food.

“That evening, she was so determined that she actually was able to fill her cup with enough grain to take it back and put together some sort of porridge for her child. It turned out later – we discovered that it wasn't enough, and that's the way that poem ended. Will there be enough? There was not, her child died," he said. 

Those are the ramifications, Garamendi says, of cutting off the essential aid that individuals across the globe rely on. And that, the Northern California representative says, isn’t all. While USAID is an agency heavily focused heavily on humanitarian efforts, it also plays an important role in national security.

“When USAID pulls out of a country, the vacuum will be filled by China and Russia. They were popping champagne corks in Russia and China when they learned that Elon Musk and Donald Trump had eviscerated [and] had shut down USAID because they knew, Russia and China knew, that they had an opportunity to step in to replace the United States and to advance their agenda,” he said. “It will be every country in the world in which USAID’s providing support, whether that is in Pakistan, whether that is in Cambodia or Thailand or Vietnam, or any one of the countries in Africa, it is a national security issue in addition to a food security issue.”

Garamendi made this plea to President Donald Trump and Elon Musk to reconsider their efforts to close down USAID.

“President Trump, get on Air Force One, visit a refugee camp, visit a place where the American government is providing food that allows people to live. Elon Musk, you got all the private jets you want. Go to Lokichogio in Northern Kenya and visit and see what is actually going on there. Take the opportunity to hold a starving child in your arms, notice the extended belly, look at the vacant stare in that child's face, and then decide whether you want to put USAID into the wood chipper,” said Garamendi. “If you decide to do that, know that you will cause people to die.”

Republicans have criticized the agency as a waste of taxpayer dollars, with USAID carrying a $40 billion price tag. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., the chairwoman of the Delivering on Government Efficiency subcommittee, introduced a bill Friday to abolish the agency alongside Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas. “As Chairwoman of the DOGE Subcommittee, I’ve launched the War on Waste — and USAID is a major culprit lighting over $40 BILLION on fire each year,” she said in a statement. “It’s time to do what DOGE does best: cut the waste.”

But supporters of USAID are quick to point out that some of that money – $2.1 billion in 2020 – went back to American farmers for purchase of their crops.

Patti Garamendi in Lokichogio, Kenya, in 2000. (Courtesy of Rep. John Garamendi)

On Friday, a federal judge placed an emergency stay on the Trump administration’s effort to place 2,200 employees of USAID on administrative leave and ordered that those who had already been placed on leave be reinstated. The order, which lasts through midnight on Feb. 14, also paused the expedited evacuation order for USAID workers and their families, which had given workers just 30 days to pack up and return to the U.S.

A hearing is set for Feb. 12 to hear arguments on the case. Garamendi says he hopes the judge will stop the Trump administration’s efforts.

“Our basic human instinct, which is written into every religion in the world, [is] that we help each other, that we look out for those who have little, that sense of our human nature needs to rise above the other part of our human nature, which is the selfishness,” Garamendi said. “Our basic humanity requires us to reach out to help people who are in need, wherever they may be – here in the United States, in our own community back home – or whether they're in some far off refugee camp in Africa.”

“I would implore, at some point, that Elon Musk and Donald Trump take a deep breath and look at themselves and judge themselves. Are they displaying that necessary human instinct to help others, or are they selfish?”