Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson voted unanimously on June 10 to pardon a 42-year-old Laotian national convicted of repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl. The pardon landed exactly one week before the man was scheduled to be deported to Laos, and federal officials say it was designed to block his removal from the country.
It did not work. Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked the man's legal status, bypassing the pardon's immigration protections entirely, and ICE carried out the deportation. But the pardon itself still stands, and the political fallout is far from over.
The case puts three of Minnesota's most powerful Democrats on record: they cleared the conviction of a man who pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal sexual conduct against a child, a crime that occurred repeatedly between 2002 and 2006. The move drew immediate and blistering condemnation from the Department of Homeland Security, reignited questions about Democratic clemency priorities, and handed the Trump administration a case study in the kind of enforcement fight it has been waging since taking office.
Tou Lue Vang, now 42, is a Laos national who pleaded guilty in 2006 to first-degree criminal sexual conduct for repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl over a four-year period. Breitbart reported that despite the guilty plea, Vang served no jail time. His legal status was revoked after the conviction, and a final order of removal was issued that same year.
For roughly two decades, Vang remained in the United States. He was eventually detained during the Trump administration's "Operation Metro Surge" immigration crackdown, which placed him back in the deportation pipeline.
Then came the pardon.
Minnesota's Board of Pardons is a three-member body: the governor, the attorney general, and the chief justice of the state Supreme Court. All three are Democrats. On June 10, 2026, the board voted unanimously to grant Vang a full pardon, erasing his 2006 conviction. The Daily Mail reported that Walz subsequently defended the decision and criticized the Trump administration's response.
The pardon application went through the Minnesota Clemency Review Commission, which recommended the action. The New York Post reported that the CRC's full commission voted four in favor, two against, with three members absent. CRC Executive Director Carli Stark wrote to Vang after the decision:
"Being granted a pardon is a notable achievement and a reflection of the work you have done since your conviction."
Walz's office pointed to a letter the victim provided to the board, claiming that such pleas for clemency carry significant weight. The New York Times reported that detail, which Breitbart cited in its coverage. No text of the victim's letter has been made public in any of the source reporting.
The timing raises hard questions. The Washington Examiner reported that the pardon came exactly one week before Vang's scheduled deportation to Laos, and DHS officials stated the pardon could "thwart his removal from the United States." Whether the board timed the pardon to coincide with the deportation date or whether the overlap was coincidental, authorities have not publicly confirmed.
The federal response was swift and unsparing. DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis issued a public statement that left no room for ambiguity:
"Governor Tim Walz's decision to pardon an illegal alien convicted child rapist so he can remain in our country is disgusting."
Bis added that the pardon would "take away this child rapist's qualifying convictions that made him removable from the United States." She also said Walz "pardoned this sex criminal in an attempt to allow him to remain in our country."
The language from DHS framed the pardon not as a routine clemency matter but as a deliberate act of obstruction against federal immigration enforcement. That framing tracks with the broader pattern of conflict between the Trump administration and Democratic state officials over immigration policy, a dynamic that has already drawn federal scrutiny of Walz and Ellison on other fronts.
The pardon erased Vang's state conviction. On paper, that removed the criminal basis for his deportation. But the Trump administration did not accept the result.
Newsmax reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked Vang's legal status through a separate federal mechanism, circumventing the pardon's immigration protections. ICE then deported Vang to Laos. Rubio issued a statement after the removal:
"Because of our action, this foreign criminal will never pose a threat to any American ever again."
The legal mechanics here matter. A state pardon can erase a state conviction, but it does not automatically override federal immigration authority. By revoking Vang's status through the State Department rather than relying on the now-erased criminal conviction, the administration found a path that the pardon could not block. Whether this approach faces legal challenge remains to be seen.
Vang's pardon was not a one-off. Fox News reported that the Minnesota Clemency Review Commission has been granting pardons to undocumented immigrants with serious criminal histories as part of a broader pattern. In May, Minnesota pardoned another Laotian citizen, Jai Vang, whose criminal history included robbery, armed robbery, and DUI.
That pattern raises a straightforward question: Is Minnesota's clemency apparatus being used as a systematic workaround to shield criminal aliens from federal deportation? DHS clearly believes so. The state's defenders point to the clemency process, victim input, and rehabilitation evidence. But the optics of a governor wiping the record of a man who pleaded guilty to years of sexual abuse against a child, one week before his removal flight, are brutal for anyone trying to make that case.
The controversy fits into a broader national debate about Democratic officials and criminal justice leniency. Critics have pointed to similar dynamics in other states, including calls by Democratic candidates for mass prisoner releases and what parents in Michigan have described as silence from elected Democrats on child sex trafficking.
Walz's office has defended the pardon by pointing to the victim's letter to the board, arguing that victim input carries significant weight in clemency decisions. The governor has also criticized the Trump administration's handling of the case. The specific content of the victim's letter and the full scope of Walz's public defense have not been detailed beyond those points in available reporting.
Ellison, the attorney general who also voted to pardon Vang, has not been quoted directly in any of the source addressing the decision. Nor has Chief Justice Hudson. The unanimous vote means all three bear equal responsibility for the outcome, but Walz, as governor and the board's most visible member, has absorbed the bulk of the public criticism.
This is the same governor who, along with Ellison, already faces a separate wave of federal backlash over the pardon's implications for immigration enforcement.
Vang has been deported. The pardon still exists on Minnesota's books, meaning his state conviction remains erased. Whether that creates any future legal complications, such as a potential attempt by Vang to return to the United States with a clean criminal record, investigators and immigration attorneys will need to assess.
The federal government's decision to use State Department authority rather than criminal-removal grounds to deport Vang could also set a precedent. If other states attempt similar pardon strategies to block deportations, the Trump administration now has a tested playbook for working around them.
Investigators have not said whether any further legal action is being considered against state officials involved in the pardon. DHS's public statements stopped short of alleging criminal conduct by the board members, but the language, calling the pardon "disgusting" and framing it as an attempt to harbor a convicted sex offender, leaves little doubt about the administration's view.
The federal enforcement climate has only intensified in recent months, with the DOJ pursuing record-scale enforcement actions across multiple fronts.
Strip away the political noise and the facts are plain. A man pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a child for four years. He avoided prison time. He avoided deportation for two decades. When federal authorities finally moved to remove him, three elected Democrats voted to erase his conviction. The federal government found another way to deport him anyway.
Every actor in this story made a choice. The clemency commission recommended the pardon. The board approved it unanimously. The governor's office defended it publicly. And the Trump administration treated it as an obstacle to be overcome, not a legal barrier to be respected.
When the people who hold pardon power use it to shield a convicted child sex offender from deportation, the question is no longer about clemency philosophy. It is about whose safety those officials believe they were elected to protect.
