source: WOLA (Washington Office on Latin America)
On April 3, 2026, the Trump administration presented to Congress its proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2027. While the historic $1.5 trillion request for defense spending is getting significant attention, the proposal for U.S. foreign aid, at just $33.6 billion for the State Department’s diplomacy and assistance activities budget, a $12 billion cut from the amount Congress appropriated for FY2026, also deserves attention.
Below, WOLA highlights key points on what the proposed foreign aid budget reveals about the Trump administration’s priorities in the second year of this presidency, particularly for Latin America and the Caribbean. For FY2026, Congress, which maintains authority over the federal budget, distanced itself from some of the administration’s key requests, including funding programs and independent agencies that the administration had sought to shut down.
As it deliberates FY2027 funding priorities, Congress should exercise its constitutionally mandated oversight role to ensure that the administration spends appropriated funds as designated for FY2026, while continuing to demonstrate its independence from the executive branch on priority issues. This should include programming that advances the affirmation made by the House Committee on Appropriations for FY2026 that it “believes strongly that defending democracy and human rights is fundamental to United States national security.”
- The Western Hemisphere makes up half of the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INCLE) request, which is a drug-war throwback
INCLE, a program established at the height of the drug war during the 1980s, is one of the largest sources of aid to Latin America, and one of very few aid accounts that can assist militaries and police forces as well as judiciaries and (if drug-related) economic programs. In the 2027 request, almost half of worldwide INCLE funding ($535 million out of $1.2 billion) would go to Latin America and the Caribbean. Twenty years ago (2006-2007), at the height of “Plan Colombia,” Latin America accounted for nearly two-thirds of a $1.2 billion INCLE outlay (without adjusting for inflation). For 2027, almost certainly for the first time since the program was created, the request calls for more INCLE aid for Mexico than for Colombia ($90 million versus $85 million).
Over the past decade, INCLE programming had been moving in a more holistic direction, leaving behind a strict focus on illicit drugs to focus more broadly on organized crime, which earns much more from non-drug income streams (illegal mining, migrant smuggling, human trafficking, extortion, fuel theft) than it did when the program was created. As violent crime became a greater source of instability and driver of migration, more INCLE programming sought to address the reasons why citizens feel unprotected, including judicial reforms and government officials’ corruption and collusion with organized crime.
Like the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, which focuses far more on what it calls “narco-terrorism” than on other criminal phenomena in the hemisphere, the 2027 foreign aid request signals a retreat from the programming of the past several years. Other than very brief mentions of “alien smuggling” and “firearms trafficking,” the aid request’s INCLE narrative for Latin America and the Caribbean makes no mention of any other non-drug income streams. Even though illicit mining could be at least as lucrative as drugs, with gold now nearly $5,000 per ounce, it is strikingly absent from the discussion of INCLE’s objectives. In programming for a region that makes up 8 percent of the world’s population but a third of its homicides, the drivers of violent crime appear only in references to gangs and “narcoterrorists.”
Instead of investing in the brave people and institutions working to break links between states and criminals, the INCLE request puts on its blinders and focuses overwhelmingly on late-20th-century drug-war priorities, along with references to expanding “U.S. access and influence.” That did not work in the 1980s, and it will not work now.
- The administration is doubling down on its efforts to dismantle U.S. support for democracy and human rights abroad
As with the 2026 budget request, the State Department again lays out its intention to eliminate the Democracy Fund, administered by the Bureau of Human Rights, Democracy, and Labor, to support civil society and other actors in advancing democracy, human rights, and good governance globally. Here, the department proposes that programs previously supported through this account “could be funded through the America First Opportunity Fund” (“could,” not “will”). In 2026, Congress appropriated $205 million to the Democracy Fund (down from over $345 million in 2025), underscoring the need for Congress to provide strong oversight of this account to determine whether and how the administration is spending the allocated funds and to ensure robust funding for 2027.
Likewise, the administration is again attempting to eliminate the bipartisan-supported National Endowment for Democracy. In 2026, Congress appropriated $315 million to NED and its core institutes (National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute, Solidarity Center, and Center for International Private Enterprise). In the budget for 2027, presented by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the administration characterizes NED, which includes on its current board both Republican and Democratic members of Congress, as well as individuals who the first Trump administration in fact appointed to State Department positions, as “an unchecked, partisan organization that funds woke propaganda outlets, censors conservative voices, and attempts to destabilize sovereign governments with whom America is not at war.”
The OMB budget and the State Department’s budget justification make no mention of support for democracy or human rights as a global goal of U.S. foreign assistance.
3. The America First Opportunity Fund would advance the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine
As with FY2026, the State Department is requesting a significant amount, $5 billion worldwide, and broad spending discretion through the America First Opportunity Fund, which would encompass many of the spending accounts legally authorized by the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. In 2026, Congress stipulated that up to $850 million in the “International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement,” “Peacekeeping Operations,” and “Foreign Military Financing Program” accounts “may be made available for the America First Opportunity Fund to furnish assistance that makes America safer, stronger, and more prosperous by responding to crises, engaging proactively with strategic partners, and countering threats from adversaries,” while maintaing other specific funding categories. (The administration had requested almost $2.9 billion for this fund in 2026.)
This year, the administration’s request is for flexible funding “to advance strategic partnerships and initiatives aligned with the President’s National Security Strategy (NSS).” For the Western Hemisphere, said funds would be guided by the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine and leveraged to “incentivize partnerships and align regional actors with U.S. interests,” such as in trade, critical minerals, and countering illegal migration. Broadly speaking, the administration has defined the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine as a way to “restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region. We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.” Other strategy documents that discuss the doctrine focus on the administration reestablishing “absolute primacy in our hemisphere.”
4. The administration would eliminate funding for several regional bodies and independent organizations
The State Department’s Congressional Budget Justification does not include any specific funding for the Organization of American States, which Congress had provided with $29.3 million in 2026, or other Inter-American organizations. As we have noted previously, the joint explanatory statement and House report accompanying the FY2026 bill both affirmed that “The Secretary of State should consider voluntary contributions to the Organization of American States for human rights and democracy programs, consistent with the Organization’s charter commitments to promote representative democracy and protect human rights.”
No funding is requested for the Inter-American Foundation, an independent U.S. government agency that has enjoyed bipartisan support for over 50 years and implements local development projects in Latin America. The IAF received $29 million from Congress for 2026.
5. Support for migrants and refugees is largely limited to emergency humanitarian assistance and reducing mass migration
The budget proposes $500 million for the Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance (ERMA) account, complementing the $4 billion requested for International Humanitarian Assistance (IHA), which consolidates the Migration and Refugee Assistance and International Disaster Assistance accounts. While this is $400 million more in ERMA than what was provided in 2026, the request represents a $1.4 billion reduction in humanitarian assistance in the IHA account.
While ERMA is directed primarily to provide emergency assistance to “respond to unexpected urgent migration and refugee crises,” the IHA, the main account to support refugee and asylum systems in other countries as well as refugee resettlement in the U.S., is now primarily focused on “counter migration programming” including support for “efforts to reduce mass and illegal immigration, such as funding voluntary returns of illegal aliens, incentivizing governments to implement Safe Third Country Agreements, and building the migration management capacity of other countries.”
Although the latter could be an important measure to support resettlement programs in host countries, an area that Congress has also supported, funding seems primarily directed at facilitating migrants’ removal from the United States or denying them the ability to access protection here. The account would only support the resettlement of up to 7,500 refugees in the United States, pending the President’s determination for 2027. This would be the same number as 2026, when the priority for resettlement was Afrikaners from South Africa, although experts point to the lack of evidence that they face any heightened risk of persecution.
6. This is the least transparent aid request that we have seen in decades of monitoring assistance programs
The annual international affairs budget request to Congress usually comes in two stages: an initial brief document, like the one published on April 3, followed weeks later by a thicker, more detailed set of documents that includes narratives, appendices, and supplemental tables. This initial document not only reveals the administration’s plans for the coming year: normally, it also offers the first glimpse Congress and the U.S. public get of how money was spent in the preceding year and how the administration expects to spend it in the current year.
Preceding and current-year spending is especially important to know for 2025 and 2026. A year ago, the new Trump administration and its “Department of Government Efficiency” all but abolished the U.S. Agency for International Development and instituted deep cuts to most aid accounts, canceling hundreds of programs and contracts. Appropriators in the congressional Republican majority did not challenge those cuts, even though they directly violated the legislature’s constitutional power of the purse.
The 2027 budget request promised to be the first official glimpse into how deep the 2025 cuts were: which programs were most deeply undone, and which countries were most severely affected. Instead, its tables completely omit country- and region-level amounts for 2025 and 2026, offering only worldwide account totals.
As of right now, our knowledge of the specifics of U.S. foreign aid ends in 2024, plus a vague sense of the administration’s aspirations for 2027.
2025 and 2026 foreign aid data must appear in the more detailed budget justification documents to be issued within the next month or two. If that information is still missing, the Department of State will be in direct violation of the law. The Foreign Assistance Act (Section 634) requires that the Department provide “the Congress and the American people” with “the dollar value of all foreign assistance and guaranties by category and by country” as spent in the preceding year, as planned for the current year, and as proposed for the coming year. The language is clear: the administration cannot withhold information about its deep spending cuts for 2025 and 2026.
