Secretary of State Marco Rubio moved to terminate the legal status of a convicted child rapist after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's pardon board tried to shield him from deportation. ICE removed the man to Laos this week.
Tou Lue Vang raped a 10-year-old girl for two years. He was convicted in 2006 and ordered removed from the country by a Department of Justice immigration judge that same year. Twenty years later, Minnesota's Board of Pardons decided he deserved a clean slate instead of a plane ticket out.
The board, made up of Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and Chief Justice Natalie Hudson, voted on June 10 to pardon Vang. DHS says the panel's stated reason was a letter from Vang's own victim, now an adult, saying she forgave him and backed the pardon. Forgiveness is the victim's to give. A pardon that erases a final deportation order is a decision three government officials made for the rest of the country, and it did not sit well in Washington.
A state pardon can wipe out a state conviction's consequences. It cannot rewrite federal immigration law. Rubio's State Department terminated Vang's legal status directly, a move that let DHS proceed with removal regardless of what the Minnesota board had done. Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis put it bluntly in the DHS release announcing the deportation: "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."
Rubio spelled out his own role on X, writing that Vang "was set to be deported until @GovTimWalz issued him a pardon. Then, I revoked his legal status." ICE picked him up and removed him from the United States this week, according to the DHS release published Friday. He will not be returning.
Legal scholar Jonathan Turley, writing on his own site, framed the standoff as a straightforward constitutional matter: a governor's clemency power reaches state punishment, not the federal government's authority over who may remain in the country. That is the argument the administration leaned on, and it is why a state pardon proved no obstacle at all once Rubio acted.
Walz faces the fallout
Neither Walz's office nor Ellison's has offered a substantive defense of the pardon beyond pointing to the victim's letter, according to Minnesota outlets that sought comment following DHS's initial criticism of the board's decision in late June. The Star Tribune reported the victim's forgiveness was the deciding factor for the board. That does not answer why a sitting governor, an attorney general and the state's chief justice chose to use their clemency power to try to keep a twice-over convicted child rapist inside the country, against a standing federal removal order issued two decades ago.
Walz is not up for reelection until 2026 is already underway around him, and this is not a fight he picked at a convenient moment. He built a national profile in part on a tough-sounding law and order message during his time as a vice presidential nominee. A pardon for a man who assaulted a fourth grader, granted with no public accounting beyond a forgiveness letter, cuts hard against that image, and Republicans in Minnesota and nationally are not going to let voters forget it.
DHS did not stay quiet either. Its initial statement criticizing the pardon accused Walz and the board of trying to override the will of the federal government, a message it repeated when it announced the deportation had gone forward anyway.
The episode leaves a clear marker for other states weighing clemency for illegal immigrants with final removal orders. A governor's signature can vacate a state sentence. It cannot vacate a federal judge's deportation order, and this administration has now shown it will use the State Department's authority to make sure that limit holds. Whether Minnesota's pardon board tries this again, and whether voters hold Walz accountable for trying it the first time, is the next question worth watching.
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