Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Friday that federal agents have removed Tou Lue Vang, a Laotian national convicted of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl, from the United States, less than a month after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and the state's clemency board wiped his criminal record clean.
Rubio said he revoked Vang's legal status earlier in the week, clearing the path for federal agents to take Vang into custody and fly him to Laos. The move came after the Minnesota Clemency Review Commission, chaired by Walz and including state Attorney General Keith Ellison and Chief Justice Natalie Hudson, unanimously pardoned Vang on June 10, a decision that erased the very conviction federal authorities had used to justify his deportation.
The pardon had been issued exactly one week before Vang was scheduled to be deported, the Washington Examiner reported, raising the question of whether the timing was designed to block his removal.
Vang pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal sexual conduct after repeatedly assaulting a girl over a period spanning from 2002 to 2006, Fox News reported. He was sentenced in February 2006 to a stayed 12-year prison term, 30 years of supervised probation, and one year in a county workhouse. He served eight months.
Ramsey County prosecutors opposed the clemency bid. An official in that office noted that Vang received the relatively lenient sentence only because the victim "was experiencing pressure from her family to not cooperate." In other words, the light punishment was not a reflection of the crime's severity, it was a product of a child's inability to fight the system around her.
A judge issued a final order of removal against Vang in 2006, after his conviction triggered the revocation of the legal permanent residency he had been granted when he entered the country through California in 1994 during the Clinton administration. For two decades, that removal order went unenforced.
Vang was finally detained in Minnesota late last year during President Trump's "Operation Metro Surge," a federal crackdown on illegal immigration and benefit fraud. His deportation appeared imminent, until the pardon intervened.
The Minnesota Clemency Review Commission granted the pardon unanimously. In a letter to the board, Vang cited years of rehabilitation and claimed he had taken full responsibility for his actions. Walz's office pointed to a letter the victim submitted to the board in support of the pardon, saying such pleas for clemency carry significant weight.
But Rubio, in a video posted to his official X account, offered a different characterization of Vang's remorse. The Secretary of State said Vang had tried to pay his victim for her silence and had referred to his crimes as "minor things."
"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."
Rubio added: "Because of our action, this foreign criminal will never pose a threat to any American ever again."
The pardon drew immediate condemnation from the Department of Homeland Security when it was first announced. Acting Assistant DHS Secretary Lauren Bis told Newsmax that Walz's decision was "disgusting" and warned that the pardon would "take away this child rapist's qualifying convictions that made him removable from the United States."
That is precisely what it did, on paper. But Rubio found another route, revoking Vang's status through the State Department and ordering federal agents to carry out the removal regardless.
This was not an isolated act of clemency. Walz has pardoned other illegal immigrants facing deportation for serious criminal convictions, establishing a pattern that critics say amounts to using state clemency power as a shield against federal immigration enforcement.
Carli Stark, executive director of the Minnesota CRC, wrote to Vang that "being granted a pardon is a notable achievement and a reflection of the work you have done since your conviction," Breitbart reported.
In May, the same board pardoned another Laotian national with a criminal history who was also facing removal, a case that drew far less attention but followed the same template: conviction, removal order, years of inaction, then a pardon timed to block enforcement.
The question is not whether a governor has the legal authority to grant clemency. He does. The question is whether that authority should be deployed to override federal immigration law on behalf of convicted sex offenders, and whether voters in Minnesota endorse that use of power.
Walz's political standing suggests they may not. His approval rating has fallen to record lows, dropping below Trump's in his own state as controversies pile up.
Laos has no formal repatriation agreement with the United States, which has historically made deportations to the country difficult. The Trump administration has stepped up pressure on Laos to accept more deportees, including the threat of sanctions and travel bans. Vang's removal suggests that pressure is producing results.
Vang was born in a Thai refugee camp in 1983 and entered the U.S. at age 11. The Clinton administration granted him permanent residency. His conviction two decades ago should have ended his presence in this country. Instead, bureaucratic inertia, a lenient plea deal, and finally a governor's pardon kept him here, until the federal government decided to act.
The broader accountability questions surrounding Walz and Ellison extend well beyond clemency. A House Oversight report has accused both officials of ignoring billions in welfare fraud in Minnesota, painting a picture of state leadership that has repeatedly looked the other way when enforcement was inconvenient.
Consider what happened here in sequence. A man pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a child over a period of years. He received no prison time. A removal order sat unenforced for nearly two decades. When federal agents finally detained him, the governor of his state, joined by the attorney general and the chief justice, voted unanimously to erase his conviction. The pardon landed one week before his scheduled deportation flight.
Rubio stated it plainly in his announcement:
"He even tried to pay his victim for her silence, and called those heinous crimes 'minor things.'"
Walz's office has not publicly addressed Rubio's characterization. Neither Walz nor Ellison offered comment in the reporting surrounding the deportation. The governor pointed to the victim's letter of support when the pardon was first announced, but has said nothing about the federal government's decision to override it.
The silence is telling. When a governor uses clemency to shield a convicted child sex offender from deportation and the federal government removes him anyway, the governor's response, or lack of one, becomes part of the record.
Rubio closed his video with a line that doubles as a policy marker:
"This administration will always stand with the American people and defend them from violent criminals."
The Trump administration found a way around the pardon. Vang is in Laos. But the fact that a sitting governor tried to keep a convicted child sex offender in the country, and that it took the Secretary of State's personal intervention to stop it, tells you everything about where the priorities of Minnesota's leadership actually lie.
