A man convicted in 2005 of sexually abusing a young girl and then pardoned by a panel including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has now been deported by the Trump administration to Laos, White House officials said Friday.
Tou Lue Vang, 42, faced deportation after immigration officials detained him during the Trump administration’s winter immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota. Vang, who came to the U.S. in 1994, had his legal status revoked in 2006 after his conviction and had an order for removal.
On June 10, the three-person Minnesota Board of Pardons, which includes Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson, pardoned Vang, giving him a way to fight deportation.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he revoked Vang’s legal status this week after news of the pardon emerged. Administration officials said Vang has now been sent to Laos from the U.S.
“Because of our action, this foreign criminal will never pose a threat to any American ever again,” Rubio said in a video statement posted to X. “Americans should 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.”
Vang was pardoned in June
Vang received a unanimous pardon in June after expressing remorse for repeatedly sexually assaulting a girl starting at the age of 10 between 2002 and 2004. Vang was around 18 at the time.
Vang pleaded guilty to first-degree sexual assault with a person under 13 and served probation instead of prison time under the terms of his 2006 sentencing.
In his letter to the board, Vang, who lived in a refugee camp in Thailand before coming to the U.S., claimed he didn’t fully understand his conduct was illegal at the time and had completed a rehabilitation program. He also argued staying in the U.S. would allow him to remain present for his six children and wife of 23 years.
Prosecutors for Ramsey County, where the offense took place, opposed the pardon, claiming pressure on the victim from her family not to cooperate with prosecutors played a role in the outcome of the case, the New York Times reported last week.
Walz and Ellison’s offices said a letter from the victim forgiving Vang was key to their decision to grant the pardon, and that they had denied clemency to others during the same hearing who were also facing deportation.
Vang also received numerous letters of support from family members vouching for his character, the attorney general’s office noted.
“The Minnesota Board of Pardons made a unanimous decision to grant Tou Vang this pardon after an exhaustive process which included a statement of support for the pardon from the victim, a recommendation to grant the pardon from the Clemency Review Commission, and a large number of community support letters,” a spokesman for the office said.
Further, the attorney general’s office disputed that the pardon affected whether Vang could be deported. Vang’s legal immigration status had been revoked two decades ago, and he could have been deported at any time.
Candidates weigh in
Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Republican Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth both said they opposed the pardon. Both are candidates for Minnesota governor this year.
“As a former prosecutor, I have not supported pardons for sex offenders and would not have voted for this pardon,” Klobuchar said in a statement.
Klobuchar served as Hennepin County Attorney before she was elected to the U.S. Senate.
Demuth praised the deportation and condemned Walz for what she claimed was an “outrageous maneuver” to help a “child predator evade the consequences of his horrific actions.”
“We should be deporting child predators who are foreign nationals,” she said in a statement. “We should not be pardoning child predators. I’m not sure why this is a hard concept for Tim Walz and Amy Klobuchar to understand.”
