USAid director of security John Voorhees and a deputy have been put on administrative leave after they blocked efforts by Doge members to physically access restricted areas, the people said. The demands led to a tense standoff during which a senior deputy to Musk threatened to call the US marshals in to grant access to the building.

The confrontation and Voorhees’ suspension was first reported by CNN and confirmed by the USAid officials. The Doge officials gained control over the access control system, which would allow them to lock out employees and read emails. They also sought personnel files and turnstile data, two people said.

Musk’s deputies may also have sought access to Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities, or SCIFs, and servers used to access sensitive cables with top-secret classifications. Four members of Doge have been granted regular access to USAid as the administration has suspended dozens of senior staff and furloughed hundreds more at the bureau for humanitarian assistance who help the agency respond to urgent crises around the world.

Katie Miller, who serves on the advisory board for Doge and is married to Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, wrote on X that “no classified material was accessed without proper security clearances”, following an AP report that Doge officials did manage to access the materials, which included intelligence reports.

The Doge crew lacked high enough security clearance to access that information, the newswire reported.

USAid continued to abruptly suspend career staffers through Sunday, with the majority of staff in the legislative and public affairs bureaus cut off from their email. More than 100 career staffers at USAid have now been put on administrative leave, according to reports confirmed to the Guardian by one current and one former USAid official.

“We’re literally coming to work each day waiting to get the email that we’re supposed to go,” said one current USAid official who has not been suspended. “It is very much a terror feeling in that building right now.”

Musk has said that USAid should be shut down as the Trump administration is said to be mulling various strategies to downsize the agency or potentially fold it into the state department. CBS News reported that JD Vance has been put in charge of figuring out next steps for USAid reform.

“USAID is a criminal organization,” Musk wrote on X, the social network that he owns. “Time for it to die.” In another post, he referred to the agency in the past tense, saying it “was a viper’s nest of radical left-marxists who hate America."

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