The Trump administration deported a convicted child sex offender to Laos last week, a man Minnesota Governor Tim Walz had personally helped pardon just weeks earlier. Walz's public response amounted to asking whether the deportation made anyone "safer," a question that landed with a thud given the man's record of repeatedly sexually assaulting a ten-year-old girl.
Tou Lue Vang, 42, entered the United States from Laos in 1994 and received legal status under the Clinton administration. Between 2002 and 2004, he repeatedly assaulted a young girl who was ten years old when the abuse began. He pleaded guilty and was convicted in 2006 of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. A Department of Justice immigration judge issued a final order of removal that same October.
Yet Vang was never deported. He remained in the country for nearly two decades after his conviction, until ICE arrested him on December 10, 2025. Even then, a federal judge in the District of Minnesota ordered his release from ICE detention in February 2026. And on June 10, Minnesota's three-member Board of Pardons, Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie E. Hudson, pardoned Vang, wiping his conviction from the record.
The pardon removed the criminal sexual conduct conviction that served as the legal basis for his deportation order. That should have been the end of it.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio had other plans. Rubio revoked Vang's legal status, stripping the immigration protections the pardon was designed to preserve. DHS announced Vang's deportation to Laos the following Friday.
Rubio framed his decision in direct terms. As Newsmax reported, Rubio stated: "Because of our action, this foreign criminal will never pose a threat to any American ever again." He added that Americans "should never have to live in fear that foreign sex predators, shielded from deportation by their own elected officials, could endanger them or their children."
DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis issued a pointed statement tying the case directly to Walz:
"ICE deported Tou Vang, an illegal alien convicted child rapist. This monster repeatedly sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl. Tim Walz pardoned this sex criminal in an attempt to allow him to remain in our country. These are the criminal illegal aliens he and sanctuary politicians are protecting. We will always put the safety of the American people first."
The White House reinforced the message: "Under President Trump, criminal illegal aliens who rape children will be found, arrested, and removed, and Democrat politicians will not stand in the way."
When Walz addressed the deportation publicly on Tuesday, he did not defend the pardon on legal grounds or explain the board's reasoning in detail. Instead, he posed a series of rhetorical questions. As the New York Post reported, Walz asked: "Did that make us any safer? Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable?"
He continued: "Did it improve the idea that we can't all be judged by our worst day? And I want to be very clear, these are horrific crimes. They often are."
The phrase "our worst day" carries a particular weight when the conduct in question spanned two years and involved the repeated sexual assault of a child. Vang himself told police at the time that the assaults were "a cultural thing" and said the young victim was equally guilty and should be arrested, according to DHS. He offered the girl $10 to stay quiet.
Walz also cited the stability of Vang's children and invoked the concept of rehabilitation. But the governor's framing sidestepped a basic question: why did the state of Minnesota move to erase the conviction of a man whose own immigration judge had ordered removed from the country twenty years ago?
The governor's broader record of controversial decisions and statements has drawn sustained scrutiny. Vice President Vance recently referred Walz and Ellison to the DOJ for a criminal investigation tied to separate fraud allegations in Minnesota.
Vang appeared before the Minnesota Board of Pardons and told the panel: "What I did was wrong. It was a serious crime. She was a child." He also argued that deportation would devastate his family: "If I am sent away, we lose everything. My children will lose their home, and they will lose their education. They will grow up without a father."
The board reportedly weighed a letter from Vang's now-adult victim, who wrote that she had forgiven him for what he did. Walz's office later pointed to that letter as carrying significant weight in the decision. The New York Times, as cited by Breitbart, reported that Walz's office said such pleas for clemency from victims "carry significant weight."
The pardon was unanimous. All three board members, Walz, Ellison, and Hudson, voted in favor.
During the board meeting, Walz stated "just remember, both were minors," a claim the Daily Mail characterized as inaccurate. Vang was eighteen years old when the assaults began. The victim was ten.
A congressional report has separately accused Walz's administration of ignoring fraud warnings as billions in federal funds disappeared under his watch, a pattern of institutional failure that extends well beyond this single case.
The Vang pardon was not an isolated act. Fox News reported that in May, Minnesota also pardoned another Laotian citizen, Jai Vang, whose criminal history included convictions for robbery, armed robbery, and DUI. The pardons suggest a deliberate strategy by the board to use its clemency power to shield illegal immigrants from federal deportation proceedings.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, a Minnesota Republican, did not hold back. Emmer called Walz "our feckless governor that puts violent illegal aliens ahead of innocent Americans," as Newsmax reported.
The timeline of the Tou Lue Vang case reveals just how many opportunities the system had, and missed, to remove him. He entered the country in 1994. He committed his crimes between 2002 and 2004. He was convicted in 2006. An immigration judge ordered him removed in October 2006. Nearly twenty years passed. ICE finally arrested him in December 2025. A federal judge ordered him released from custody in February 2026. The state pardoned him in June. And only after the Secretary of State revoked his legal status was he finally put on a plane.
Minnesota Democrats have meanwhile blocked an impeachment probe into Walz on a party-line vote, even as fraud losses linked to his administration have mounted.
The governor's rhetorical questions on Tuesday revealed a governing philosophy that prioritizes the offender's family circumstances over the severity of the crime and the safety of the public. Walz acknowledged the crimes were "horrific." He then immediately pivoted to whether the deportation improved anyone's life.
What he did not address: why a man who told police his victim deserved to be arrested, who offered a child ten dollars for silence, and who described his crimes as a "cultural thing" deserved to have his conviction erased by the state of Minnesota. He did not explain why the board acted just days before Vang's scheduled deportation. He did not explain why he told the board that "both were minors" when Vang was eighteen.
The Washington Examiner noted that Rubio terminated Vang's legal status specifically because the pardon had removed the criminal conviction underlying his deportation order, meaning the Trump administration had to find a separate legal mechanism to carry out the removal that Minnesota had tried to block.
Walz has spent recent months traveling overseas to criticize the Trump administration at progressive summits. Back home, his pardon board freed a convicted child sex offender from the consequences of his crimes, and when the federal government stepped in to do what Minnesota would not, the governor asked whether it made anyone safer.
The ten-year-old girl Tou Lue Vang assaulted never got to ask that question. Tim Walz asked it for her abuser.
