Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz held a press conference this week and asked whether deporting a man convicted of repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl made anyone safer, the second time the Democratic governor has publicly questioned the removal of Tou Lue Vang, a Laotian national who lost his legal status after a 2006 conviction for first-degree criminal sexual conduct.
ICE deported Vang last week after Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked his legal status, overriding a pardon that Walz and two other members of Minnesota's Board of Pardons had unanimously approved on June 10. The pardon wiped Vang's conviction from his criminal record under state law and removed the legal basis for his deportation, a move the Department of Homeland Security said was designed to let a convicted sex offender stay in the country.
Walz acknowledged that Vang committed what he called "horrific crimes." Then he kept talking. As Just the News reported, the governor posed a series of rhetorical questions at his press conference:
"Did that make us any safer? Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable. Did it improve the idea that we can't all be judged by our worst day?"
That last line, "judged by our worst day", landed like a brick. The crime in question was not a bad day. It was years of abuse.
Court records show Vang repeatedly sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl between 2002 and 2004. He was convicted in 2006 of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. An immigration judge issued a final order of removal that same year, and Vang lost his legal status.
DHS and prosecutors stated that Vang attempted to pay the victim $10 to keep quiet. He also reportedly told investigators that it was "a cultural thing" to marry and have sex with girls as young as 12, and claimed the victim shared responsibility for the assaults.
Vang entered the United States in 1994 and obtained legal status. He was a native of Laos. After his conviction, the deportation order sat for two decades, until the current administration moved to enforce it.
That enforcement triggered the pardon. On June 10, Minnesota's Board of Pardons, composed of Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson, whom Walz appointed, voted unanimously to wipe Vang's record clean. Under Minnesota law, the pardon set aside the conviction entirely and meant Vang would no longer be required to disclose it. As we previously reported, Walz pardoned the illegal immigrant specifically to block his deportation.
Rubio did not wait long. In a video released last Friday, the Secretary of State laid out the administration's position in direct terms:
"Just days before this foreign sex offender was scheduled to be deported, Tim Walz, the governor, issued him a pardon, setting him free to once again endanger the children of America. This week, I revoked his legal status in the United States, and as a result, federal agents took him into custody... because of our action, this foreign criminal will never pose a threat to any Americans ever again."
Rubio added that Americans "must never be forced by their elected leaders to live alongside foreign sex criminals who have no right to begin with to reside in our country." The Washington Examiner confirmed that Rubio terminated Vang's legal status and framed the pardon as an attempt to shield a sex offender from removal.
DHS interim assistant secretary Lauren Bis issued a statement that left no room for diplomatic hedging:
"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."
On Monday, DHS posted on social media: "While Walz and his fellow sanctuary politicians fight to protect illegal alien sickos like this, we'll keep fighting to get them out of our country." The agency had previously called Walz's comments "truly disgusting."
The press conference this week was not the first time Walz defended the pardon. At a prior press conference, he offered a longer explanation that has drawn even more scrutiny. Walz doubled down on the decision with a statement that read like a policy brief for keeping a convicted sex offender in the country:
"I can find no reason how Minnesota will be safer or better if Mr. Vang is deported to a country he has not been to since he was a child. I do not see how it would serve his family and the stability of his family, nor the economic interests of Minnesota, where we have a tax-paying citizen who is creating job growth and living a life free from any criminal activity."
At that same press conference, Walz insisted that "immigration status or pending deportation is not a reason in and of itself in the granting of a pardon." But the timing told a different story. The pardon came just days before Vang's scheduled deportation. DHS said the pardon put the deportation "in jeopardy", which was, by all appearances, the point.
The White House weighed in as well. Newsmax reported that a White House statement declared: "Under President Trump, criminal illegal aliens who rape children will be found, arrested, and removed, and Democrat politicians will not stand in the way." The controversy also drew criticism from within Walz's own party. Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar said she would not have voted to pardon Vang.
Fox News reported that Minnesota's Board of Pardons also pardoned another Laotian citizen, Jai Vang, in May. That individual's criminal history included armed robbery and DUI convictions. Two pardons of Laotian nationals with serious criminal records in the span of weeks raises questions about what criteria the Board of Pardons is actually applying, and whether blocking deportation has become an unofficial function of the clemency process in Minnesota.
Conservative radio host Glenn Beck responded to Walz's "worst day" framing on social media: "Raping a child is not a 'bad day.' It is a horrific crime that should always carry the heaviest consequences."
That reaction captured what millions of Americans were thinking. Walz framed the deportation of a convicted child sex offender as a question of economic utility and family stability. He asked whether removing a man who sexually assaulted a child for years made anyone safer. The answer, for most people, is not complicated.
Breitbart noted that Vang received no jail time for his original conviction, a detail that makes the pardon even harder to justify. The man avoided prison, kept his freedom for two decades despite a standing deportation order, and then received a full pardon from the state's highest officials just as federal authorities were finally about to enforce the law.
The pardon controversy is not Walz's only problem. Separately, Vice President Vance has sent evidence of Minnesota welfare fraud to the Department of Justice, targeting both Walz and Attorney General Ellison for a criminal inquiry. That referral adds another layer of legal exposure to a governor already facing calls for impeachment and recall from conservatives.
Walz announced in January that he would not seek a third term. But the pardon scandal has accelerated questions about whether he should finish this one.
The governor sits on a three-member Board of Pardons alongside Ellison and Chief Justice Hudson. All three voted to wipe the record of a man who sexually assaulted a child. All three knew a deportation order was pending. And Walz, rather than staying quiet after the federal government overrode his decision, chose to step in front of cameras, twice, and ask whether the deportation of a convicted sex offender served anyone's interests.
As Rubio moved to deport the pardoned offender, the contrast between state and federal action became impossible to ignore. Minnesota's governor used the power of clemency to shield a convicted sex offender from the consequences of federal law. The federal government used its authority to enforce a deportation order that had been on the books for twenty years.
Walz keeps asking whether deporting Vang made anyone safer. He has not addressed a more basic question: Why did he use the pardon power to erase the conviction of a man who sexually assaulted a child, at the precise moment that conviction was the only thing standing between that man and a two-decade-old deportation order?
He says immigration status was not a factor. The calendar says otherwise.
When a governor looks at a case file describing years of sexual abuse against a 10-year-old girl, and his first instinct is to ask whether deportation serves the state's "economic interests," something has gone badly wrong, not with the deportation, but with the judgment of the man who tried to stop it.
