Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is defending his vote to pardon a Laotian national convicted of sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl after the Trump administration revoked the man’s legal status and deported him to Laos.
Tou Lue Vang, 42, received a pardon from the Minnesota Board of Pardons on June 10.
The board is made up of Walz, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson.
On Friday, the Trump administration announced that Vang had been removed from the United States after Secretary of State Marco Rubio terminated his legal status.
Asked about the deportation, Walz questioned whether sending Vang out of the country actually helped anyone.
“Did that make us any safer?” Walz said Tuesday, according to KTTC. “Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable?
“Did it improve the idea that we can’t all be judged by our worst day?”
“And I want to be very clear,” Walz continued. “These are horrific crimes. They often are.”
Walz also said Vang’s pardon was not about immigration policy, noting that the Board of Pardons had denied clemency to other applicants facing immigration consequences.
But Republicans and Trump officials saw the case very differently.
Rubio said the administration acted to make sure Vang could never again threaten American families.
“Americans should never have to live in fear that foreign sex predators — shielded from deportation by their own elected officials — could endanger them or their children.
“That’s why I terminated his legal status in the United States,” Rubio continued. “Vang has now been removed from our country and will never pose a threat to any American ever again.”
INSANITY: Tim Walz says we shouldn’t judge child molesters based purely on their decision to rape a child but on how they live their rest of their lives. pic.twitter.com/TuNck03oNc
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Vang entered the United States through California in 1994 and was granted legal status during the Clinton administration.
Between 2002 and 2004, he repeatedly sexually assaulted the victim in St. Paul, Minnesota, according to Fox News Digital.
The first assault happened when the girl was in fourth grade.
After his conviction, federal officials said Vang lost his legal status and was placed under a final removal order.
The Minnesota Clemency Review Commission recommended a pardon for Vang, and the Board of Pardons later granted it.
Walz defended the decision in part by citing the victim’s support for Vang’s pardon, according to KSTP.
A spokesperson for Ellison’s office told MPR News that the pardon did not shield Vang from deportation.
Federal immigration officials and Republican lawmakers still blasted the move, arguing Minnesota Democrats had gone soft on one of the most disturbing kinds of criminal cases imaginable.
Homeland Security acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis ripped Walz after the pardon.
“Governor Tim Walz‘s decision to pardon an illegal alien convicted child rapist so he can remain in our country is disgusting,” Bis said..
“These are the criminal illegal aliens he and his Minnesota sanctuary politicians are protecting.”
The case has become another flashpoint in the immigration fight between Donald Trump’s Washington and Democratic-run states.
Walz framed the matter as a question of rehabilitation, family stability and whether people should be defined forever by their worst act.
Trump officials framed it as something much simpler: a convicted child sex offender who lost his legal status should not remain in the United States.
For conservatives, Vang’s removal is exactly what tough immigration enforcement is supposed to do.
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