ZAATARI REFUGEE CAMP, Jordan — His skull and jaw wrapped in bandages, the young Syrian refugee stared nonchalantly into a small black box at a supermarket in this sprawling, dust-swept refugee camp. The box scanned his iris to identify him, charged his account and sent him on his way.

If the boy noticed U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley watching intently from just a few feet away, he didn’t show it. But Haley would later tout the iris-scanners as a fraud-cutting tool boosting efficiency for the more than $6.5 billion the U.S. has spent helping those whose lives have been upended by Syria’s harrowing civil war.

Yet as Haley pledged Sunday that the U.S. would increase support, her message was diluted by President Donald Trump’s own vow to put “America First,” his planned budget cuts and hard-line position on admitting refugees.

“We’re the No. 1 donor here through this crisis. That’s not going to stop. We’re not going to stop funding this,” Haley said. “The fact that I’m here shows we want to see what else needs to be done.”

It was a theme the outspoken ambassador returned to over and over in Jordan at the start of her first trip abroad since taking office. In her stops here and in Turkey — another Syria neighbor — Haley is witnessing firsthand the strains placed on countries absorbing the more than 5 million Syrians who have fled the Islamic State group, President Bashar Assad’s government, or both.

She climbed into the trailer of an 18-wheeler staged at the Ramtha border crossing less than a kilometer from Syria, inspecting boxes of peas, tuna and canned meat stacked shoulder-high. The truck was to join 19 others in a convoy into opposition-held territory in Syria, carrying supplies from U.N. agencies and other groups, many U.S.-funded.

“This is all in the name of our Syrian brothers and sisters,” Haley told aid workers in a nearby tent, swatting away flies in the summer heat. “We want you to feel like the U.S. is behind you.”

The U.S. president’s message to Syrians couldn’t be more different.

Trumponce called his predecessor “insane” for letting in Syrian refugees. As president, he tried to bar them from the U.S., describing them as a national security threat.

And Trump has called for drastic cuts to U.S. funding for the United Nations and its affiliated agencies — such as those aiding people still in Syria and those who’ve fled. Trump plans to release his budget blueprint Tuesday, but his initial proposal in March called for a one-third cut to diplomatic and overseas programming while boosting the U.S. military by $54 billion.

In Zaatari, half of the 80,000 refugees are children, and a dozen babies are born here per day, according to UNICEF, the U.N.’s child welfare agency. Thirty-five percent of marriages involve a child under 18, a reflection of the economic hardships families in the camp face.

As ambassador, Haley plays a key but only partial role in the Trump administration’s decision-making on Syria, refugees and humanitarian aid. But her role at the U.N. puts her at the center of the debate about how the global community takes on the crisis. After all, it’s successive U.N. Security Council resolutions that created the legal framework for aid groups to send aid into Syria, with or without Assad’s consent.

At the Marka military airport in Amman, Haley went aboard a cargo plane to get a rare look at high-risk operations to airdrop wheat, lentils and cooking oil into Assad-controlled territory in Deir el-Zour, which is completely surrounded by the Islamic State group. In a sign of Moscow’s outsize influence in the Syria conflict, both the aircraft and the company that flies it on behalf of the World Food Programme are Russian.

“It’s smiles, and tears,” said David Beasley, WFP’s executive director. “It really is.”