Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and the state's Board of Pardons wiped the criminal record of a 42-year-old illegal immigrant convicted of repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl, a decision the Department of Homeland Security says will strip federal authorities of the legal basis to deport him.
Tou Lue Vang, a Laotian national who entered California in 1994, pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal sexual conduct for assaults on the child that occurred between 2002 and 2004. He was convicted and sentenced in 2006. A Department of Justice immigration judge issued a final order of removal. His legal status in the United States, originally granted under former President Bill Clinton, was revoked.
None of that mattered on June 10, 2026, when the Minnesota Clemency Review Commission voted to recommend a full pardon and the Board of Pardons, consisting of Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Chief Justice Natalie Hudson, unanimously approved it. The pardon came just one week before Vang's scheduled deportation to Laos.
The DHS press release issued July 1 laid out the case in unsparing detail. Vang repeatedly sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl over a two-year span. He offered the child $10 to keep quiet. When police confronted him, he told them his victim was "just as guilty" and should be arrested.
He also offered a cultural defense. DHS attributed this statement to Vang's police interview:
"It is a cultural thing [...] to marry and have sex with girls as young as 12."
The victim was ten.
Vang's conviction in 2006 triggered the revocation of his legal status and a final order of removal from the country. But Laos had largely refused to accept deportees from the United States until recently, allowing Laotian nationals like Vang to forestall their removal for years. That changed last year, and Vang was detained during what the New York Post reported was the Trump administration's "Operation Metro Surge" immigration crackdown in Minnesota.
His deportation was finally within reach. Then Minnesota's pardon board intervened.
Acting DHS Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis did not hold back in the department's press release:
"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 spelled out the practical consequence in a second statement:
"This pardon will take away this child rapist's qualifying convictions that made him removable from the United States."
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin also weighed in. Breitbart reported Mullin's statement: "This evil alien from Laos repeatedly sexually assaulted a 10 year old child. These are the illegal alien criminals sanctuary politicians like Tim Walz are protecting over American citizens."
The federal government's position is clear: the pardon functionally neutralizes the legal mechanism that made Vang deportable. Whether DHS has any remaining avenue to enforce removal absent those qualifying convictions remains an open question, one the press release did not address.
Vang's case is not isolated. Just one month earlier, Minnesota granted a pardon to another illegal immigrant convicted of felony robbery with a gun. DHS issued a separate press release on that case as well. Fox News identified that individual as Jai Vang, another Laotian citizen whose criminal history included armed robbery and DUI convictions.
The Minnesota Clemency Review Commission, which Walz created in 2023, has been busy. Data from the commission shows that roughly 16 percent of pardon applications submitted between March 2025 and June 2026 cited the threat of deportation as a reason for seeking a pardon. The New York Times reported that Minnesota granted 121 pardons and denied only 14 last year.
Walz and other pardon officials have acknowledged that the threat of deportation facing convicted immigrants is "a factor considered among many," the Times reported. That framing, deportation as merely one consideration, does little to explain why a man convicted of sexually assaulting a child deserved to have his record erased just days before federal authorities could finally remove him.
The executive director of the Minnesota Clemency Review Commission, Carli Stark, sent Vang a letter after the pardon. The Washington Examiner reported that Stark wrote: "Being granted a pardon is a notable achievement and a reflection of the work you have done since your conviction."
A notable achievement. For a man who sexually assaulted a child for two years, blamed the victim, and called it culture.
The governor's involvement in this case sits within a broader pattern of effort to expand clemency power in Minnesota. In 2021, Walz attempted to change the pardon process so that only two of the three Board of Pardons members would need to approve a pardon, eliminating the unanimity requirement. The Minnesota Supreme Court struck that change down in 2022, declaring it unconstitutional.
Undeterred, Walz created the Clemency Review Commission the following year. The commission reviews applications and makes recommendations to the Board of Pardons. It was this commission that voted to wipe Vang's record and sent the recommendation forward.
Under the existing rules, the pardon still required unanimous approval from all three board members: Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Chief Justice Natalie Hudson. All three voted yes.
Minnesota is listed by the Department of Justice as a sanctuary state, a designation that reflects the state's posture toward federal immigration enforcement. The Board of Pardons decision fits neatly into that posture. The pardon did not just forgive a crime. It removed the legal tool the federal government needed to enforce an existing court order.
Somewhere in this story is a victim. A girl who was ten years old when Tou Lue Vang began assaulting her. A child he tried to buy off with $10. A child he told police was "just as guilty."
That girl watched the justice system convict her abuser in 2006. She watched an immigration judge order his removal. And now, twenty years later, she can watch the governor of Minnesota, the attorney general, and the chief justice of the state supreme court vote unanimously to erase the record, and, in DHS's assessment, erase the path to deportation along with it.
Vang submitted a letter of regret as part of his pardon application, Newsmax reported, and argued the pardon would help him remain in the country with his family. The commission and the board found that persuasive enough.
No one in Minnesota's pardon apparatus has publicly explained why a man who blamed a ten-year-old for her own assault, who invoked "culture" to justify sex with children, and who carried a final order of removal for two decades deserved the extraordinary remedy of a full pardon. Walz himself offered no direct public statement in the available record.
The federal government, meanwhile, is left holding an order of removal it may no longer be able to enforce, courtesy of three Minnesota officials who decided a convicted child sex offender's desire to stay outweighed the law's demand that he leave. Protecting children was apparently not among the many factors considered.
Several questions hang over this case. Does the pardon legally nullify the existing final order of removal, or does it only strip the qualifying convictions as a basis for removability? What legal options, if any, does DHS retain? Did Vang's application specifically cite deportation as a reason for seeking the pardon? And why did all three members of the Board of Pardons, including a chief justice, conclude that this particular case warranted clemency?
None of those answers have surfaced. What has surfaced is the result: a man convicted of sexually assaulting a child, who blamed his victim and invoked cultural entitlement, now holds a clean record in the state of Minnesota. The federal deportation order that took twenty years to become enforceable may now be worthless.
The sanctuary state movement has always been sold as a matter of compassion. But when the compassion flows to a convicted child sex offender and the cost falls on a victim who was ten years old, the word loses whatever meaning it had left.
This is what sanctuary looks like when the politics run out of guardrails. The criminals get pardons. The victims get silence. And the officials who signed off go home without having to answer a single question.