U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported Tou Lue Vang, a Laotian national convicted of repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally revoked his legal status, overriding a pardon issued just weeks earlier by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and the state's Board of Pardons.
Rubio announced the removal on Friday, framing the action as a direct federal response to a state government that chose to shield a convicted sex offender from deportation. The Daily Caller reported that Vang had been set for removal before the pardon cleared the way for him to stay in the country.
The timeline tells the story. Vang pleaded guilty in 2006 to first-degree criminal sexual conduct for assaults against a girl who was 10 years old, crimes that occurred over a two-year period. His conviction stripped his legal status and triggered a final order of removal. Then, on June 10, the Minnesota Clemency Review Commission, of which Walz is a member, approved a pardon that removed the conditions requiring his deportation. Rubio stepped in, terminated Vang's status, and ICE carried out the removal.
Rubio left no ambiguity about the administration's position. In a post on X, he laid out the sequence plainly, as the Washington Examiner reported:
"Laotian national Tou Lue Vang was convicted of sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl in Minnesota. He was set to be deported until @GovTimWalz issued him a pardon. Then, I revoked his legal status. @ICEgov has removed him from the U.S. and he will never endanger another..."
In a separate statement, Rubio was more direct about the principle at stake:
"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."
That word, "forced", is the operative one. The pardon did not merely forgive a past crime. It functioned as a shield against federal deportation, issued by state officials who knew removal was imminent.
The details of Vang's case make the pardon all the more difficult to defend. When questioned by law enforcement, Vang described his conduct as "a cultural thing [...] to marry and have sex with girls as young as 12." A Department of Homeland Security press release, published July 1, noted that Vang also attempted to convince police that the 10-year-old victim was equally guilty and should herself be arrested.
That is the man the Minnesota Board of Pardons chose to protect from removal.
The Breitbart report on the case identified the full composition of the board that granted the pardon: Walz, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson. The vote was unanimous.
The timing alone raises serious questions about motive. Vang had been living in the United States for years after his 2006 conviction and removal order. He was detained under the administration's "Operation Metro Surge" in Minnesota, Fox News reported. The pardon came just days before he was set to be deported.
Walz and other pardon officials acknowledged, per reporting by the New York Times cited in the Daily Caller's account, that the threat of deportation facing an individual is a factor the commission considers in its pardon review. In other words, the very fact that ICE was about to remove Vang may have been part of the reason the board acted to stop it.
Rubio, who has emerged as one of the administration's most visible cabinet members on both foreign policy and domestic enforcement, used his authority as Secretary of State to terminate Vang's legal status outright. That cleared the final obstacle. Federal agents took Vang into custody and removed him from the country.
The Department of Homeland Security did not hold back. Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis issued a statement that named Walz directly. As the New York Post reported, Bis said:
"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."
Bis added that Walz and "sanctuary politicians" were protecting criminal illegal immigrants, and that the administration would "always put the safety of the American people first."
Minnesota is listed by the Department of Justice as a sanctuary state, meaning its policies limit local and state authorities from cooperating with federal immigration agents. That designation adds institutional context to the pardon. Walz's government is not merely declining to assist ICE. In this case, it actively intervened to prevent a lawful removal.
Vang's pardon was not the only one of its kind. Fox News reported that in May, the same Minnesota Board of Pardons also pardoned Jai Vang, a Laotian citizen with convictions for robbery, armed robbery, and DUI, also ahead of an ICE deportation. The pattern suggests a deliberate strategy by the board to use the pardon power as a tool to obstruct federal immigration enforcement.
That strategy ran into a wall when Rubio exercised federal authority to revoke the legal status that the state pardon had attempted to preserve. The mechanism Rubio used was not detailed in available reporting, but the result was unambiguous: Vang was removed.
Rubio's rising political profile has tracked closely with his willingness to take public, high-profile enforcement actions. This case fits that pattern, a visible confrontation with a Democratic governor over a politically charged deportation.
Walz did not respond to the Daily Caller's request for comment before publication. His silence leaves the pardon to speak for itself.
The open questions in this case are not small ones. What were the precise terms of the pardon? Which conditions were removed, and under what legal reasoning? Did Walz personally vote to approve it, or did the commission act as a body without individual accountability? What factors beyond the deportation threat did the board weigh, and did the interests of the victim, now an adult who endured years of sexual abuse as a child, enter the calculus at all?
None of those questions have been answered publicly. What is known is this: a man convicted of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl over a two-year period, a man who told police his crimes were a "cultural thing" and tried to have his child victim arrested, received a unanimous pardon from Minnesota's highest officials, timed to prevent his removal from the country.
The federal government overrode that decision. Rubio revoked the status. ICE carried out the deportation. The administration's position, stated by Rubio, was plain:
"This administration will always stand with the American people and defend them from violent criminals."
The broader political dynamics of the administration have been marked by internal debates over policy and personnel, including reported friction among cabinet officials on other fronts. But on immigration enforcement, the message from Rubio and DHS has been consistent: federal law will be enforced regardless of state-level obstruction.
Meanwhile, Democratic officials in states like Minnesota and California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom faces his own federal scrutiny, continue to position themselves as obstacles to immigration enforcement. The Vang case offers a concrete example of what that obstruction looks like in practice: a convicted child sex offender, shielded by a governor's pardon, removed only because the federal government refused to accept it.
When a governor uses the pardon power to keep a convicted child sex offender in the country, and won't even explain why, the public doesn't need a press release to know whose side he's on.
