Samaritan’s Purse Awarded $19M in USAID Funds Amid Foreign Aid Freeze

Milton Quintanilla

Audio By Carbonatix

By Milton Quintanilla, Crosswalk.com

Samaritan's Purse, led by evangelist Franklin Graham, has received $19 million in reimbursement from USAID funds for its humanitarian work in Sudan despite president Donald Trump's 90-day pause on all federal foreign aid in January.

Earlier in March, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration needed to release nearly $2 billion to cover humanitarian work already completed. According to Church Leaders, Samaritan's Purse reportedly received $19 million from USAID funds for its work in Sudan.

"If the U.S. State Department continues to provide funds for emergency food and medicine, we will continue to consider working with them on a case-by-case basis, as we have done for more than 30 years," Graham, son of the late evangelist Billy Graham, told The Christian Post in a statement.

"Of course, none of this changes any of the work that Samaritan's Purse is already doing throughout Africa and the rest of the world. The funding agreements with USAID are in addition to our ministry work."

Graham, an avid supporter of Trump, told TIME in February that he is in favor of freezing foreign aid funds.

"I think it is good because there has never really been a review of the policies and procedures and expenditures," he explained. "To take a pause and to shake things up and hold people accountable, I think, is very good."

However, the evangelist expressed concern that Trump would take it too far.

"Because the staff at USAID was allowed to misappropriate billions of dollars, I think the pendulum is going to swing to a point where the baby may be thrown out with the bathwater. And that is tragic, but it's because the culture of USAID got so far off track," Graham said.

He noted that Samaritan's Purse previously reported having $13 million in frozen reimbursements from USAID.

"It's not going to change the work that we do," Graham contended. "We have not discontinued the work that we were doing for them in Sudan because we may not get that $13 million they owe us."

A number of ministries and nonprofits faced following the freeze of federal foreign aid —including World Vision, which relied on nearly 45 percent of its annual income to come from federal grants. On the other hand, Samaritan's Purse depended on federal funds for around 4 percent of its annual income.

Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.