A federal watchdog found 101 UNRWA employees were Hamas fighters who took part in the October 7 massacre, and has referred all of them to the State Department for a ten-year ban from U.S.-funded aid programs.
The United States Agency for International Development's inspector general released findings Monday showing that 101 current and former employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency participated in Hamas's October 7, 2023, terror attacks in Israel. The individuals held jobs as schoolteachers, principals, security staff, psychosocial counselors, and medical personnel. They also held combat roles inside Hamas's military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, according to the USAID OIG report.
The inspector general identified specific cases that illustrate how deeply Hamas had burrowed into the agency. A deputy school principal served as a deputy company commander in Hamas. Another held the rank of squad commander in the Khan Younis Brigade. A classroom teacher was a platoon commander in the Central Brigade. A mathematics and computer science teacher had ties to an al-Qassam intelligence cell. A separate UNRWA instructor possessed, according to the report, "expertise as a sniper for Hamas."
The inspector general recommended all 101 individuals be suspended or debarred from participation in U.S.-funded programs for ten years. Findings were transmitted to the State Department, which now holds responsibility for acting on those referrals. To date, 108 individuals connected to UNRWA have been blacklisted, as the probe continues to expand.
State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott did not push back on the findings. "Unfortunately, it is no surprise that another 100 UNRWA employees were determined to be involved in the barbaric Oct. 7 attack," Pigott said, according to reports. Washington Free Beacon broke the story exclusively, and Jewish News Syndicate and Israel Hayom independently confirmed the findings. The USAID inspector general's investigative summary is posted publicly on the agency's official website.
The 101 new referrals are not the end of the investigation. The USAID inspector general's office has indicated its work will eventually encompass at least 1,500 UNRWA-linked individuals suspected of terror ties, according to the Free Beacon's prior reporting on the probe's expansion. Earlier this year, in April 2026, the inspector general had already referred four additional former UNRWA staff to the State Department for debarment consideration over their participation in the October 7 attacks.
The scale of the findings amounts to a documented indictment of UNRWA's internal oversight. American taxpayers contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to the agency over the years before the Trump administration cut off funding. Monday's report provides the most detailed federal accounting yet of what that money was underwriting. Critics who called the defunding premature now face a federal record showing combatants, snipers, and intelligence operatives on the agency payroll.
FTO Designation on the Table
The findings are accelerating a push in Congress and inside the administration to go further than debarring individuals and to formally designate UNRWA itself as a foreign terrorist organization.
Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, both members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the Free Beacon that the moment for half-measures has passed. "Either they come clean, or I expect growing momentum for designating them for the support they give to terrorists," Cruz said. More than 90 House members, led by Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, have already sent a letter urging President Trump to dismantle UNRWA entirely.
A foreign terrorist organization designation would do more than freeze funding. It would strip UNRWA of diplomatic immunity under U.S. law and expose the agency to civil lawsuits from victims of the October 7 attacks, according to the Free Beacon's reporting on the broader probe. Punitive measures under discussion also include opening the agency to legal action from terror victims' families.
UNRWA has pushed back hard. Agency officials briefed congressional staffers in December 2025, arguing against any FTO designation and insisting the agency investigates misconduct internally. Critics note that those internal processes failed to surface a single one of the operatives now identified in the federal investigation.
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister David Mencer said last week that UNRWA "is a terrorist organization," a position that now has explicit American documentation behind it. UNRWA had not publicly responded to the 101 new findings as of Monday.
With all 101 referrals sitting at the State Department and investigators still working through a list of 1,500 suspects, the next test is whether Foggy Bottom moves swiftly on the debarment recommendations or lets them stall. In Congress, a formal FTO vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would put every member on record, a dynamic that Cruz and Hagerty appear ready to force.
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