Federal agents deported Tou Lue Vang, a Laotian national convicted of first-degree criminal sexual conduct against a 10-year-old girl, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked his legal immigration status, bypassing a pardon that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson had granted him just weeks earlier.
The deportation, announced Friday by ICE and the State Department, caps a months-long standoff between Minnesota's Democratic leadership and the Trump administration over whether a state pardon could shield a convicted sex offender from federal immigration enforcement.
The answer, delivered on a plane to Laos, was no.
Vang arrived in the United States in 1994 as a refugee and was granted legal status under the Clinton administration. Between 2002 and 2004, he repeatedly sexually assaulted a girl who was 10 years old when the abuse began. Investigators reported that Vang offered the child $10 for her silence and described his crimes as "a cultural thing."
He pleaded guilty in 2005 to first-degree criminal sexual conduct. The Washington Examiner reported that under a plea deal, Vang was sentenced in 2006 with largely no prison time. A federal immigration judge ordered him deported that same year, and his legal status was revoked upon conviction.
Yet Vang remained in the country for nearly two decades.
ICE agents finally arrested Vang on December 10, 2025, as part of the Trump administration's "Operation Metro Surge" enforcement push, Fox News reported. But on February 19, 2026, an unnamed Minnesota judge ordered ICE to release him from custody. The legal basis for that release order has not been publicly disclosed.
Then came the pardon. On June 10, 2026, approximately one week before Vang's scheduled deportation, the Minnesota Board of Pardons unanimously granted him clemency. The board comprises three officials: Gov. Walz, AG Ellison, and Chief Justice Hudson. All three signed off.
The board sent Vang a letter that Breitbart News characterized as congratulatory. Carli Stark, executive director of the Minnesota Clemency Review Commission, wrote to Vang that his pardon was "a notable achievement and a reflection of the work you have done since your conviction," Fox News reported.
A notable achievement. For a man who pleaded guilty to raping a child.
The pardon removed the underlying conviction from Vang's record, the same conviction that had triggered his federal deportation order. In theory, this could have shielded him from removal. The Trump administration chose a different path.
Secretary of State Rubio revoked Vang's legal immigration status outright, bypassing the pardon's protections. ICE then carried out the deportation to Laos. As Newsmax reported, the removal happened within hours of Rubio's action.
Rubio framed the move in blunt terms. As the New York Post reported, the Secretary of State said:
"Americans must not be forced by their elected leaders to live alongside foreign sex criminals, who have no right to begin with to reside in our country. Because of our action, this foreign criminal will never pose a threat to any American ever again."
DHS acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis was equally direct:
"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 Vang case did not occur in isolation. Fox News reported that in May, the same Minnesota Board of Pardons pardoned Jai Vang, a separate Laotian citizen with convictions for robbery, armed robbery, and DUI. That pardon likewise appeared aimed at shielding an illegal immigrant with a violent criminal history from federal removal.
Two pardons. Two illegal immigrants. Two violent criminal records. The same three Minnesota officials signing the paperwork each time.
Neither Walz, Ellison, nor Hudson has been quoted in any of the available reporting offering a public explanation for why they chose to extend clemency to a convicted child sex offender days before his scheduled deportation. The Newsmax report noted that the board cited a letter from the victim herself supporting clemency as decisive in its decision, a claim that, if accurate, raises its own questions about the institutional pressures surrounding a pardon process controlled entirely by elected officials.
Step back from the individual case and the sequence tells a broader story about how state-level officials can use their powers to frustrate federal immigration enforcement.
A federal judge ordered Vang deported in October 2006. That order sat unenforced for nineteen years. When ICE finally acted in December 2025, a Minnesota judge intervened to release him. When ICE prepared to deport him anyway, the state's top three officials handed him a pardon designed, in DHS's characterization, to eliminate the legal basis for removal.
Each step required an affirmative decision by a state official. Each decision moved in the same direction: keeping a convicted child sex offender in the United States.
The Washington Examiner noted that the pardon effectively gave Vang a clean slate, removing the first-degree criminal sexual conduct conviction from his record. The Trump administration's workaround, revoking legal status through the State Department rather than relying on the now-vacated conviction, may set a precedent for future clashes between state clemency powers and federal immigration authority.
Several questions hang over this case. Who was the Minnesota judge who ordered Vang's release in February, and on what legal grounds? What specific reasoning did the Board of Pardons use to justify clemency for a first-degree criminal sexual conduct conviction? Did Walz, Ellison, or Hudson consult with federal authorities before issuing a pardon they knew would interfere with a pending deportation?
And perhaps most pressing: how many other pardons have Minnesota officials granted to illegal immigrants facing removal, and how many of those cases involved violent offenses?
None of these questions have been answered in public. Walz has offered no on-the-record defense. Ellison has said nothing. Hudson, a jurist whose role on the Board of Pardons gives her co-equal authority with two partisan elected officials, has remained silent.
The unnamed girl Vang assaulted was 10 years old when the abuse started. She would be in her early thirties now. The Newsmax report indicated that a letter from the victim was cited in the pardon decision, though the contents of that letter have not been made public.
Whatever that letter said, it was Minnesota's governor, attorney general, and chief justice who chose to act on it, not by offering the victim support or services, but by wiping the conviction of the man who raped her and handing him a letter of congratulations.
Vang called what he did to that girl "a cultural thing" and tried to buy her silence for $10. Minnesota's highest officials, two decades later, tried to buy his freedom with a pardon.
The federal government sent him home instead. That is how the system is supposed to work, when the people running it still believe that protecting children matters more than protecting illegal immigrants from the consequences of their crimes.
