I hate to say I told you so, but ... naah, I love to say I told you so. Especially when it comes to kicking child molesters out of the country after Democrat governors attempt to keep them on the streets.
Last month, Tim Walz and his Board of Pardons issued a pardon to Tou Lue Vang, who had been in prison since pleading guilty to repeated sexual assaults on a girl for two years, starting when she was ten years old. The Board of Pardons, as David pointed out last week, consists of Walz, radical AG Keith Ellison, and Walz' appointed chief justice of the state supreme court. Walz and his panel intended to keep Vang from deportation back to Laos, whence he came to the US illegally, by removing the only conviction on his record.
The Department of Homeland Security called the move "disgusting" at the time:
“Governor Tim Walz's decision to pardon an illegal alien convicted child rapist so he can remain in our country is disgusting,” said Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis. “These are the criminal illegal aliens he and his Minnesota sanctuary politicians are protecting. Tou Lue Vang lost his legal status following his conviction for repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl. Following the conviction, he was placed in removal proceedings and issued a final order of removal by a judge. This pardon will take away this child rapist’s qualifying convictions that made him removable from the United States.”
Well, that was what Walz and Ellison hoped, anyway. They wanted to thumb their nose at DHS, ICE, and Donald Trump by, er ... [checks notes] ... releasing a child predator onto the streets of Minnesota. As I wrote at the time, that logic appeared to parallel the Labour Party's decision to allow rape rings to operate for decades rather than run the risk of looking culturally insensitive by booting out the Muslim immigrants running them.
I also wrote that this very weird strategy likely wouldn't work:
I'm not so sure this will work. A state pardon does not have any real impact on the status of an illegal alien at the federal level. Trump has said he wants to concentrate on criminal illegal aliens, but that doesn't mean deportation is limited to that class. Furthermore, the government has every right to cite the details of Vang's crimes as an argument about his fitness to remain in the country. Walz' pardon does not vindicate Vang, nor does it erase the evidence of his crime, including his own statements admitting to them. And again, a state pardon only has impact on state-level consequences, not federal consequences.
As it turns out, Walz' pardon did nothing to prevent DHS from kicking Vang out of the country. The agency announced Vang's deportation in the last hour by e-mail:
The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released the following statement confirming that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested and deported an illegal alien from Laos who had been pardoned by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and his fellow sanctuary politicians despite a prior conviction for repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl.
Tou Lue Vang, an illegal alien from Laos, had been convicted in 2006 of first-degree criminal sexual conduct after he repeatedly assaulted a girl between 2002 and 2004, starting when she was just 10 years old. He once offered his victim $10 to keep quiet about the sexual assaults. When interviewed by police, he tried to justify his actions as “a cultural thing,” and even said that his victim was just as guilty as him and should also be arrested.
Following his conviction, a Department of Justice (DOJ) Immigration Judge issued Vang a final order of removal on October 31, 2006. ...
“ICE deported Tou Vang, an illegal alien convicted child rapist. This monster repeatedly sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl,” said Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis. “Tim Walz pardoned this sex criminal in an attempt to allow him to remain in our country. These are the criminal illegal aliens he and sanctuary politicians are protecting. We will always put the safety of the American people first.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio intervened to strip Vang of a legal status he never should have had in the first place. That allowed DHS to arrest Vang and kick him out of the US, as Rubio explained earlier today on X/Twitter:
Laotian national Tou Lue Vang was convicted of sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl in Minnesota.
— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) July 10, 2026
He was set to be deported until @GovTimWalz issued him a pardon.
Then, I revoked his legal status. @ICEgov has removed him from the U.S. and he will never endanger another… pic.twitter.com/WCJkeeheJO
What exactly did Walz, Ellison, and Democrats get out of this? They made it clear that they will let sex offenders on the street as a means to frustrate the enforcement of immigration law. At the same time, Walz also demonstrated his own incompetence to game out this situation more than a single step at a time. In fact, Walz may have made Vang more of a target for DHS and the State Department with his ham-handed abuse of the pardon process. Would DHS have made Vang a priority had Walz not turned him into some bizarre, pedophilic cause celebre?
The end result is that Vang is out of the US and Walz exposed as a radical who will put children at risk to score cheap points on immigration. If Walz could have played this worse, someone will have to explain how.
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