Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and the state Board of Pardons wiped the criminal record of a man convicted of repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl, a move that effectively killed his pending deportation to Laos and triggered an immediate backlash from federal immigration authorities.
Tou Lue Vang, 42, a Laotian national, pleaded guilty in 2005 to first-degree criminal sexual conduct for assaults on the child that occurred between 2002 and 2004. He was sentenced in 2006. Following that conviction, his legal immigration status was revoked, and federal authorities issued a final order of removal.
On June 10, the Minnesota Board of Pardons voted unanimously to grant Vang a full pardon. The board includes Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and the chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court. The pardon came exactly one week before Vang was scheduled to be deported, the Washington Examiner reported.
The Department of Homeland Security did not hold back. Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis called the pardon "disgusting" and accused Walz of shielding a dangerous criminal from federal law enforcement.
"Governor Tim Walz's decision to pardon an illegal alien convicted child rapist so he can remain in our country is disgusting. These are the criminal illegal aliens he and his Minnesota sanctuary politicians are protecting."
Bis made clear that the pardon strips federal authorities of the legal foundation they need to carry out Vang's removal. She said the pardon "will take away this child rapist's qualifying convictions that made him removable from the United States," as Newsmax reported.
Under federal immigration law, certain criminal convictions serve as the legal basis for deportation orders. When a state pardon erases those convictions from a person's record, it can eliminate the grounds on which removal proceedings rest. That is precisely what happened here, DHS officials said.
Bis also called on Walz directly to reverse course. "DHS is calling on Gov. Walz to stop these dangerous political games and to stop prioritizing criminal illegal aliens over American citizens," she said.
Vang had been detained by federal authorities as part of the Trump administration's "Operation Metro Surge," an immigration enforcement initiative targeting the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. He was in federal custody and on track for removal to Laos when the pardon landed, Fox News reported.
The timing raised immediate questions about whether the Board of Pardons acted specifically to block the deportation. Authorities have not publicly confirmed the board's internal deliberations or stated what factors drove the timing of the June 10 vote.
Walz's office has not publicly addressed the criticism from DHS or explained why the board moved when it did. The Washington Examiner noted that the victim in the case reportedly submitted a statement supporting the pardon, which the board cited as part of its justification for the unanimous decision.
This is not the first time the Minnesota Board of Pardons has drawn scrutiny for shielding a convicted criminal immigrant from federal deportation in 2026. In May, the same board pardoned another Laotian citizen, Jai Vang, whose criminal history included convictions for robbery, armed robbery, and DUI, Fox News reported.
Two pardons of convicted foreign nationals facing removal in the span of a few weeks paints a picture of deliberate policy, not case-by-case mercy. Federal officials have framed the pattern as Minnesota actively working against immigration enforcement.
The controversy lands at a moment when Walz's governance record in Minnesota faces intensifying federal scrutiny on multiple fronts. Vice President Vance recently referred Walz and Ellison to the Department of Justice over alleged failures to address fraud in the state.
The pardon drew public condemnation beyond the halls of government. Actress Justine Bateman, known for her outspoken conservative views, called Walz "irrefutably grotesque" for the decision, as Breitbart reported. Bateman's comments amplified the story beyond political media and into broader public conversation.
The reaction from public figures like Bateman reflects a growing sense among conservatives that Walz's clemency decisions are not acts of compassion but calculated moves to obstruct federal immigration enforcement, even when the beneficiary is a convicted child sex offender.
Minnesota has faced a string of federal investigations and enforcement actions that suggest deep institutional problems under Walz's leadership. FBI and Homeland Security agents raided 22 Minnesota businesses earlier this year as part of a sweeping social services fraud probe.
The Vang case exposes a gap in the intersection of state clemency power and federal immigration law. Governors and state pardon boards hold broad authority to forgive criminal convictions. When they exercise that power, the federal government can lose the legal predicate it needs to deport someone.
In Vang's case, his 2005 guilty plea and 2006 conviction for first-degree criminal sexual conduct formed the basis for his final order of removal. The pardon wiped that conviction from his record, pulling the rug out from under the federal deportation order.
This creates a situation where a state official can, with a single vote, override a federal removal order that took years to process. Whether Congress or the courts will address this tension remains an open question. For now, the power sits squarely with governors like Walz.
The broader pattern of fraud and oversight failures in Minnesota extends to individual criminal cases as well. A Minnesota grocer was recently charged with allegedly running a $1.1 million SNAP fraud scheme, one more data point in a state that federal investigators have placed under a microscope.
Investigators and the public still lack answers to several basic questions. Authorities have not publicly confirmed whether the Board of Pardons coordinated with Vang's defense attorneys or advocacy groups before the June 10 vote. Investigators have not said whether the board considered the pending deportation date as a factor in its decision.
The New York Post reported that the Minnesota Clemency Review Commission, headed by Walz, voted at the June 10 meeting to grant the pardon. No public explanation has been offered for why the board chose to act on a two-decade-old case at the precise moment federal agents were preparing to carry out a removal order.
DHS has not indicated whether it will pursue alternative legal avenues to deport Vang now that his qualifying conviction has been pardoned. Federal officials have also not said whether they plan to challenge the pardon's effect on the removal order in court.
The Vang pardon is not just about one man's criminal record. It tests whether state clemency power can be weaponized to systematically block federal immigration enforcement. If governors can pardon their way around deportation orders, the federal government's ability to remove convicted criminal aliens shrinks to whatever state officials allow.
For the 10-year-old girl Vang was convicted of assaulting, the pardon carries a different weight entirely. Whatever her stated position, the legal system that convicted her assailant has now told him his crime is forgiven in the eyes of the state.
When a governor uses the pardon power to keep a convicted child sex offender in the country one week before his deportation flight, the question stops being about clemency and starts being about whose side the governor is on.
