The USAID inspector general's office has referred 101 current or former employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency to the State Department after determining they participated in the October 7 attacks on Israel and/or maintained affiliations with Hamas's military wing. The findings, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, bring the total number of individuals blacklisted through the probe to 108.
The referrals recommend suspension and debarment, a government-wide blacklist that would bar the 101 individuals from working on any American foreign aid project for 10 years. And federal investigators say they are not finished. The report notes that additional referrals are expected, along with potential criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.
The case lays bare what Israel has argued for two decades: that UNRWA, the 76-year-old U.N. arm established to provide aid to Palestinians, has been thoroughly infiltrated by Hamas. What makes this round of findings so damaging is the specificity. These were not low-level hires or peripheral figures. They were school principals, teachers, counselors, and medical professionals, people entrusted with educating children and delivering humanitarian relief in Gaza, who allegedly doubled as soldiers and commanders in Hamas's Al-Qassam Brigades.
The investigatory report paints a detailed picture of dual roles. One deputy school principal served as an al-Qassam deputy company commander in the Ain Gallout/5th infantry battalion. Another deputy school principal held the rank of squad leader for the Khan Younis Brigade/2nd. A third deputy principal operated as a platoon commander in Hamas's Nuseirat battalion with communications responsibilities on October 7th.
The list extends well beyond administrators. A math and computer teacher had ties to an Al-Qassam intelligence squad. Another UNRWA instructor possessed expertise as a sniper for Hamas. One staffer was identified as a Hamas soldier with orders to bring two anti-tank missiles to a prescribed location during the October 7 attacks.
The roles described in the report, school principals, teachers, security personnel, attendants, psychosocial counselors, and medical professionals, represent the full breadth of UNRWA's civilian workforce. The overlap with Hamas's command structure was not incidental. It was systematic.
State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott told the Free Beacon the findings confirmed what the administration already suspected.
"Unfortunately, it is no surprise that another 100 UNRWA employees were determined to be involved in the barbaric October 7 attack. President Trump and Secretary Rubio have affirmed time and time again that no State Department funding will be provided to UNRWA, which has been totally infiltrated by Hamas and terrorist sympathizers."
A senior State Department official offered a blunter assessment of what the investigation has uncovered.
"The sheer amount of officials tied to terrorist activity is shocking and unacceptable. This investigation validates Secretary Rubio's policy that UNRWA is a subsidiary of Hamas and should not be part of Gaza's future."
The language is worth noting. The State Department is not describing UNRWA as compromised or partially infiltrated. It is calling the agency a "subsidiary" of Hamas, a word chosen deliberately to describe an institutional relationship, not a few bad actors slipping through a hiring process.
That framing tracks with what a broader federal investigation has already revealed: the USAID inspector general's probe encompasses at least 1,500 UNRWA-linked individuals suspected of terror ties.
The 101 new referrals did not emerge in isolation. In February, one UNRWA school principal who participated in the October 7 attacks as a member of Hamas's East Jabaliya Battalion was formally blacklisted. That case was among the earliest to surface from the inspector general's investigation.
Since then, the pace has accelerated. A senior State Department official familiar with the investigation described the trajectory in stark terms.
"The USAID inspector general's cases, coming in droves, are corroborating the obvious parent-subsidiary relationship between UNRWA and Hamas in Gaza. If UNRWA was not a U.N. organization, it'd be undeniably facing terrorist sanctions based on what USAID IG has uncovered."
That last sentence carries a sharp implication: UNRWA's status as a United Nations body has functioned as a shield against the kind of enforcement that would be applied to any other entity with this level of documented ties to a designated terrorist organization.
The investigation has also been hampered by institutional resistance. In recent weeks, discussions about punitive measures accelerated after reports emerged that UNRWA and other U.N. agencies attempted to stonewall the inspector general's probe. When the entity under investigation refuses to cooperate with the investigators, the question shifts from whether there is a problem to how deep the problem runs.
The Trump administration and Congress are now considering a range of punitive measures that go far beyond funding cuts. Options on the table include stripping UNRWA of diplomatic immunity under U.S. law, opening the agency to legal action from terror victims, and fully designating UNRWA as a foreign terrorist organization.
Congressional calls for UNRWA to be dissolved or formally designated are expected to intensify in the wake of the latest findings. The 108 blacklisted individuals represent only the cases that have been processed so far. With the broader investigation covering at least 1,500 suspects, the referral pipeline shows no sign of slowing.
For years, defenders of UNRWA in the international community and in American policy circles treated allegations of Hamas infiltration as Israeli propaganda or exaggeration. The standard response was that a few employees might have ties to militant groups, but that the agency itself remained a legitimate humanitarian operation serving millions of Palestinian refugees.
That argument becomes harder to sustain with each batch of referrals. When your deputy school principals command infantry platoons, when your math teachers run intelligence squads, and when your instructors carry orders to deliver anti-tank missiles on the day of the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians in the nation's history, the word "infiltration" no longer fits. You do not infiltrate something you already control.
The broader debate over how Hamas's narrative has been amplified through institutional channels, whether media, international organizations, or aid agencies, gains new weight when the aid agency's own workforce turns out to include military commanders.
The USAID inspector general's report flags potential criminal referrals to the Department of Justice. Whether DOJ has already received any referrals related to these 101 subjects remains unclear. So does the question of whether the State Department has already acted on the suspension and debarment recommendations or is still reviewing them.
UNRWA's response to the latest findings, if one exists, has not been reported. Neither has any response from Hamas. The silence itself is telling, though silence is not evidence. What is evidence is the investigatory record: 108 blacklisted individuals, 101 new referrals, at least 1,500 suspects under review, and a pattern of obstruction from the very U.N. agencies that are supposed to be cooperating.
The scale of what the USAID inspector general has documented raises a question that goes well beyond UNRWA. For decades, American taxpayers funded an organization that Israel warned was a front for terrorism. Those warnings were dismissed, minimized, or met with denial. Now a U.S. government law enforcement body, not the Israeli military, not a think tank, not a partisan outlet, has produced a record that makes the case in granular, operational detail.
The USAID inspector general's office operates as a law enforcement entity separate from the largely defunct USAID. Its mandate is to serve as the chief oversight body for American foreign assistance. Its findings carry legal weight, not just political significance.
The 101 UNRWA staffers referred to the State Department held positions that gave them daily access to children, vulnerable populations, and the infrastructure of humanitarian aid in Gaza. They were psychosocial counselors. They were medical professionals. They were the people a displaced family would turn to for help.
And they were, if the inspector general's findings hold, soldiers in a terrorist army that carried out the October 7 massacre.
Every international body that defended UNRWA's integrity, every diplomat who argued the agency was too important to defund, every editorial board that dismissed concerns about Hamas infiltration as overblown, they all now face a factual record that grows longer by the week. The question is no longer whether UNRWA had a Hamas problem. The question is whether UNRWA was ever meaningfully separate from Hamas at all.
When schoolteachers double as snipers and principals command battalions, the relief agency is not being exploited. It is the operation.
