A USAID official escaped violence in Congo. He returned home to a different crisis
Kenneth Bledsoe woke up on Jan. 28 fearing for his job. An attorney assigned to the U.S. Agency for International Development mission in the Congo, Bledsoe learned that the Trump administration had culled USAID's senior ranks as an opening salvo in its bid to dismantle the longtime foreign aid agency.
Around midday, however, a more pressing matter arrived at his doorstep -- quite literally.
Protesters had gathered outside the walls of his home in Kinshasa, Bledsoe recalled in an exclusive interview with ABC News' Alex Presha. Colleagues reported looting and fires nearby as part of increasingly violent political demonstrations sweeping through the country.
"We heard the mobs outside our gates, right?" Bledsoe said. "We heard explosions. We heard gunshots."
Bledsoe said he summoned his two children, ages 9 and 11, into the house and locked the doors. But "because all the leaders were gone," he recalled, "I was worried we might be abandoned there."
"It's the most panicked I've ever been in my life," he said.
Within hours, after overcoming several bureaucratic hurdles tied to the pruning of the agency's leadership team, Bledsoe said he and his family were evacuated from the city with nothing more than what they could fit on their laps. At least one former colleague "had to leave pets behind," Bledsoe said.
"We escaped by boat across the river," he told Presha. "We couldn't get to the airport. That wasn't safe."
Two days later, after some 30 hours without sleep, Bledsoe, his wife, and their two children arrived in Washington, D.C.
But it wasn't the homecoming he and his colleagues had hoped for. The world's richest man, Elon Musk, was boasting on his social media platform X about "feeding USAID into the wood chipper" as part of his role leading the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
"That really, really hurt," Bledsoe said.
"We risked our lives for this country," he said. "I risked my life and my family's lives only ... to land in the United States and be under attack in a completely different way."
Compounding the trauma of his evacuation and the subsequent attacks on his work, Bledsoe soon learned that he was among the thousands of USAID employees who were placed on administrative leave. Bledsoe claims the government has yet to reimburse him for more than $16,000 in cost-of-living expenses incurred after the evacuation.
"[Musk and his supporters] call us radical Marxists who hate America, right? We love America more than anybody. We love it so much that we're trying to export the ideas of America to the Congo, which is a difficult assignment even by USAID standards," Bledsoe said.
"It stung a lot," he said. "Like, it hurt. It still hurts."
The Trump administration has decimated the aid agency as part of its broader pledge to slash federal spending that does not align with Trump's "America First" foreign policy vision.
Bledsoe later documented his narrow escape from the Congo in one of several affidavits filed as part of a lawsuit challenging the legality of the Trump administration's attempts to dismantle USAID. He filed that declaration under the pseudonym Marcus Doe for fear of government retaliation.
A federal judge blocked the suit's bid for a preliminary injunction in February, which paved the way for the administration to move ahead with its cuts to the agency.
President Donald Trump, with the support of Musk, has moved aggressively to shutter the agency's Washington, D.C., headquarters. Earlier this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced plans to cancel 83% of USAID programs and move the remaining work to "be administered more effectively under the State Department."
A federal judge in a separate case wrote this week that Trump's decision to rescind some $60 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid may violate rules dictating the separation of powers.
"The constitutional power over whether to spend foreign aid is not the President's own -- and it is Congress's own," wrote U.S. Judge Amir Ali, a Biden-era appointee, adding elsewhere that Trump officials "offer an unbridled view of Executive power that the Supreme Court has consistently rejected."
For Bledsoe, who remains on administrative leave, he and his family are focused on moving on. But with so many of their possessions left behind, he says that hasn't been easy.
"We had four little suitcases. I'm coming to you today in my dad's sweater, right? Because I don't have really good clothes to wear on TV," he said. "So we're trying to rebuild a life from scratch."
