Two months ago, the Biden administration announced an initiative to share satellite data with Central American countries including Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to help them prepare for severe storms.

The goal was twofold. In a region vulnerable to hurricanes and other calamities made worse by a warming climate, reducing the damage would help ease suffering. It would also relieve the pressure to migrate to the United States. And at $6.6 million, the project, run by the U.S. Agency for International Development and NASA, cost a tiny fraction of what the federal government spends on border security.

That program, along with a suite of other development projects designed to reduce the flow of people from Central America to the U.S. border, now seems to be over. The day he took office, Mr. Trump signed an order freezing U.S.A.I.D. spending; on Friday, he proposed closing the agency entirely. The State Department has assumed responsibility for the agency, which is set to lose 97 percent of its staff.

“The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests,” Mr. Trump’s Jan. 20 order began. But the agency’s resilience programs show that in an age of worsening climate threats, distinguishing humanitarian programs overseas from American interests is not as clear-cut as it might seem. Cutting those programs could increase migration from Central America, the opposite of what Mr. Trump has said he wants to achieve.

“U.S.A.I.D. built a vast array of programs to help families foresee and adjust to climate shocks without migrating,” said Michael A. Clemens, a professor at George Mason University who was a senior adviser at the agency during the Biden administration. Ending those programs “leaves migration as the only viable way for many families in the Western Hemisphere region to cope.”

Noam Unger served at the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. during the George W. Bush administration and was acting chief strategy officer at U.S.A.I.D. for a period early in the first Trump administration.