WASHINGTON: The State Department office that handles refugee issues and works to cut illegal migration will lead the US response to overseas disasters, according to excerpts from an internal department cable, a role for which experts say it lacks the knowhow and personnel.
The Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, known as PRM, is assuming that function from the US Agency for International Development, the main US foreign aid agency that the Trump administration has been dismantling, say the excerpts reviewed by Reuters.
USAID’s gutting — largely overseen by billionaire Elon Musk as part of US President Donald Trump’s drive to shrink the federal government — has already led to what many experts called the administration’s late and inadequate response to a serious earthquake in Myanmar on March 25.
The excerpts come from a cable known as an ALDAC, which stands for “All Diplomatic and Consular Posts,” sent this week to US embassies and other diplomatic posts worldwide.
Reuters could not learn the precise date of the ALDAC.
Under the new arrangement, all US overseas missions should consult with PRM on foreign disaster declarations, said the cable.
“With approval from PRM based on established criteria for international disaster assistance, up to $100,000 can be issued to support the initial response,” it continued. “Additional resources may be forthcoming based on established humanitarian need” in consultation with other State Department offices.
The State Department did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
A source familiar with the matter confirmed on condition of anonymity the authenticity of the excerpts.
Only 20 experts out of the roughly 525 who did the work at USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance and its Office of US Foreign Disaster Relief are being hired by PRM, the source said.
But, the source continued, the number is far from adequate and the PRM leadership has “no concept of how to” mount responses to major overseas disasters.
“They do not understand disaster response,” said the source.
“It’s a joke. It’s ridiculous,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former director of the Office of US Foreign Disaster Relief who serves as president of Refugees International, an advocacy organization. “PRM is not an operational entity. They do important stuff but this is not what they do.”
In past years, the US has regularly deployed some of the world’s most skilled rescue workers quickly to save lives in response to tsunamis, earthquakes and other disasters.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has rejected criticism of the administration response to the earthquake in Myanmar. He said it was a difficult place to work, the military junta does not like the US and it was unfair that the US has provided most international humanitarian aid.
Konyndyk warned that with the approaching Caribbean hurricane season the US can no longer mobilize the world-leading Disaster Assistance Response Teams (DARTs) it once could to help with serious disasters on this side of the globe.
“The mechanics of how DARTs work cannot be replicated in PRM,” Konyndyk said. “They are just trying to create a Potemkin DART.”
The Trump administration’s dismantlement of USAID has seen thousands of contractors fired, most of the 10,000 staff placed on administrative leave and facing termination, and billions of dollars in life-saving programs for tens of millions of people canceled. One cable excerpt said that in the event of an overseas disaster, PRM may call on what’s left of USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance to mobilize the remnants of its staff “to provide the most efficient and effective response.”

MEMPHIS, Tennessee: A fire that severely damaged a historic Black church that served as the headquarters for a 1968 sanitation workers’ strike, which brought the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis, was intentionally set, investigators said Wednesday.
The fire at Clayborn Temple, which was undergoing a yearslong renovation, was set in the interior of the church, the Memphis Fire Department said in a statement. Investigators are searching for a person suspected of being involved with the blaze.
Flames engulfed the downtown church in the early hours of April 28. Later that day Memphis Fire Chief Gina Sweat said the inside of the building was a total loss but there was still hope that some of the facade could be salvaged.
The fire department said on May 14 that the building had been stabilized and investigators would use specialized equipment to study the fire’s cause.
“Clayborn Temple is sacred ground — home to generations of struggle, resilience and creativity,” Anasa Troutman, executive director of Historic Clayborn Temple, said Wednesday. “This act of violence is painful, but it will not break our spirit.”
Located just south of the iconic Beale Street, Clayborn Temple was built in 1892 as the Second Presbyterian Church and originally served an all-white congregation. In 1949 the building was sold to an African Methodist Episcopal congregation and given its current name.
Before the fire it was in the midst of a $25 million restoration project that aims to preserve the architectural and historical integrity of the Romanesque revival church, including the revival of a 3,000-pipe grand organ. The project also seeks to help revitalize the neighborhood with a museum, cultural programing and community outreach.
King was drawn to Memphis in 1968 to support some 1,300 predominantly Black sanitation workers who went on strike to protest inhumane treatment. Two workers had been crushed in a garbage compactor in 1964, but the faulty equipment had not been replaced.
On Feb. 1 of that year, two more men, Echol Cole, 36, and Robert Walker, 30, were crushed in a garbage truck compactor. The two were contract workers, so they did not qualify for worker’s compensation, and had no life insurance.
Workers then went on strike seeking to unionize and fighting for higher pay and safer working conditions. City officials declared the stoppage illegal and arrested scores of strikers and protesters.
Clayborn Temple hosted nightly meetings during the strike, and the movement’s iconic “I AM A MAN” posters were made in its basement. The temple was also a staging point for marches to City Hall, including one on March 28, 1968, that was led by King and turned violent when police and protesters clashed on Beale Street. One person was killed.
When marchers retreated to the temple, police fired tear gas inside and people broke some of the stained-glass windows to escape. King promised to lead a second, peaceful march in Memphis, but he was shot by a sniper while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel on April 4.
After King was assassinated and the strike ended with the workers securing a pay raise, the church’s influence waned. It fell into disrepair and was vacant for years before the renovation effort, which took off in 2017 thanks to a $400,000 grant from the National Park Service.
Clayborn Temple was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. A memorial to the sanitation workers, named “I AM A MAN Plaza,” opened on church grounds in 2018.
About $8 million had been spent on the renovations before the fire, and the exterior had been fully restored, Troutman said.
She said in a recent interview that two chimneys had to be demolished before investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives could safely work on the property, but the church organ had been removed before the fire.
As the fire was burning, she said, people went to the “I AM A MAN” memorial and stood at a wall where the names of the striking sanitation workers are listed.
“I watched that wall turn into the Wailing Wall, because people were literally getting out of their cars, walking up to that wall and wailing, staring at the building on fire,” she said.