Former Michelle Obama Aide Gets $686K As Refugee Nonprofit Revenue Plummets

Oct 26, 2026 5:54 PM
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Former Michelle Obama Aide Gets $686K As Refugee Nonprofit Revenue Plummets
AP Photo/Erin Hooley

What is it with these people and the never-ending gravy train of graft? Krish O’Mara Vignarajah is the CEO of something called Global Refuge, in Baltimore, Maryland. This is a faith-based non-profit organization, that has been the recipient of hundreds of millions in American taxpayer cash since 2021, mostly from the State Department and Health and Human Services. This is an organization that provides services for "refugees" who all seem to want to come to the United States. Here's their mission statement:

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For more than 85 years, Global Refuge (formerly Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service) has provided the resources, guidance, and community to help forge a way forward for New Americans. We’re committed to helping people reimagine the possibilities while providing a soft place to land. 

Since 1939, we’ve built a legacy of compassion by walking alongside more than 800,000 new neighbors as they rebuild their lives in the United States.

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah runs this organization, which is, again, a non-profit, and which has, again, received hundreds of millions in cash, money taken from you and I by force of law. And wait until you get a load of her salary. 

In 2025, she made $686,000, a 2% drop from the $699,000 she made the year before. That compares to a 44% drop in the nonprofit’s revenue during the same time, from $304.3 million in 2024 to $170.4 million last year.

O’Mara Vignarajah received a $172,963 bonus in 2024, in addition to a base salary of $526,536. She received no bonus in 2025, but her base salary rose to $686,000, according to the nonprofit’s tax filings.

That's more than many Americans make in eight or nine years, maybe more. Notice also how in that second year she got no bonus, but her salary increased to make up the loss. But here's the zinger: This person was previously a policy director for Michelle Obama. Now she's raking in a bloated salary to head up a "come one, come all" group trying to bring every "refugee" from every Third World Schiff-hole on the planet, to the United States. But her work didn't start with one former first lady, but with another one, one who is possibly even more notorious for corruption.

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O’Mara Vignarajah, 47, is a lawyer who served as senior advisor at the State Department under Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. In 2015, she was named policy director for First Lady Michelle Obama. She was hired by Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, noting that when she was an infant, her family fled Sri Lanka on the brink of civil war.

So, she worked for Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama. Oh, and John Kerry, who by the way served in Vietnam, in case you had never heard that. And she was hired for this cushy gig with a fat paycheck why? Because her family fled Sri Lanka when she was a baby. 

Wow. Just... Wow. That's mind-boggling.

Now, let's apply the Shoe On The Other Foot Rule. Let's say a certain person, perhaps a person of pallor, to make the difference all the more clear, had worked as a senior adviser to Barbara Bush, then as a policy director for Melania Trump — and then somehow was hired as CEO of a non-profit, say one whose mission statement says they have been formed to provide free legal defense for lawful gun owners involved in a self-defense shooting. Let's say that this person is raking in a $700,000 salary for his position. Let's also say that the Department of Justice has dumped a few hundred millions of taxpayers' money into that non-profit.

Can you imagine the outcry from the left? The wails of outrage would be audible from the moons of Saturn. 

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The Trump administration has made some decent progress towards ending the endless outpouring of American taxpayer cash to every NGO and non-profit that has been standing there with their hands out. But more and more, it's becoming apparent that the Trump administration needs to put down the scalpel and start wielding an axe — and cut these grants off at the roots.

Editor’s Note: Help us continue to report the truth about corrupt politicians. 

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