Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison are under fire after granting a pardon to a Laotian immigrant convicted of repeatedly sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl. The controversial move clears the conviction that placed him on the verge of deportation.
The Crime
As reported on Friday’s AM Update, Tou Lue Vang, 42, was born in a refugee camp in Thailand after his family fled Laos. He entered the United States as a child in 1994 and received legal status under the Clinton administration.
According to the criminal complaint shared on X by Fox News’ Bill Melugin, Vang was around 18 when he began abusing the unnamed victim in 2002. The complaint described repeated assaults in graphic detail.
Vang met the girl through her older sister, whom he later married, making the victim his sister-in-law. The abuse began before that marriage and continued for several years afterward. According to the Department of Homeland Security, Vang at one point offered his victim $10 to stay quiet about the assaults.
When questioned by a detective following his 2005 arrest, Vang acknowledged the sexual contact but dismissed it as a “minor thing.” He claimed it was “a cultural thing in Thailand for men to marry and have sex with girls as young as 12,” and then blamed the victim, who was 12 years old at that time, telling investigators she should be arrested too because she was “as much at fault.”
The Lenient Punishment
Vang later pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal sexual conduct under an agreement that spared him from prison, instead receiving 30 years of probation. The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted the case, told The New York Times that the lenient sentence was partly the result of pressure the victim was facing from her own family not to cooperate.
Vang’s legal status was revoked following the conviction and an immigration judge issuing a final order for his removal in 2006. Nevertheless, he remained in the U.S. for nearly two decades because Laos largely refuses to accept deportees, leaving many Laotian and Hmong immigrants with removal orders living in the U.S. under federal supervision, according to The Times.
But that policy started to change during President Donald Trump’s second term. Laos has reportedly accepted more deportees in recent years, and the administration has carried out hundreds of removals involving people with decades-old orders.
The Pardon
Federal immigration authorities detained Vang in December as part of Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota. With his deportation imminent, he then applied for a pardon from the State of Minnesota, citing his rehabilitation, his wife and six children, and arguing that he had taken full responsibility for his actions, according to his application reviewed by The Times.
The nine-member Minnesota Clemency Review Commission considered his appeal in April. Four members voted to recommend the pardon, two voted against it, and three were absent.
The final decision rested with the three-member Minnesota Board of Pardons, which is made up of Gov. Walz, Attorney General Ellison, and Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson. The trio voted on June 10 to pardon Vang, and the board subsequently informed him in a letter that receiving clemency was “a notable achievement and a reflection of the work you have done since your conviction.”
The victim also appeared to support the decision in an unsigned statement. “What happened to me was wrong, but I have had many years to think about this,” she wrote. “I have made my peace with it. I forgive him.”
“I want his family to stay together here. His children need their father. He and his wife have built a life. I believe that he has learned and grown since the abuse and that the family has suffered enough,” the statement continued.
The pardon removed the conviction that had served as the basis for Vang’s removal case, potentially allowing him to remain in the U.S. DHS is accusing Minnesota officials of protecting a dangerous foreign-born criminal from removal.
“Governor Tim Walz’s decision to pardon an illegal alien convicted child rapist so he can remain in our country is disgusting,” DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said a statement. “These are the criminal illegal aliens he and his Minnesota sanctuary politicians are protecting.”
Walz and Ellison’s offices, meanwhile, defended the pardon decision to The Times by pointing to the clemency commission’s recommendation and the victim’s statement.
“The Minnesota Board of Pardons made a unanimous decision to grant Tou Vang this pardon after an exhaustive process which included a statement of support for the pardon from the victim, a recommendation to grant the pardon from the Clemency Review Commission and a large number of community support letters,” Ellison’s office told The New York Times.
It also politicized the situation, referencing what The Times summarized as “President Trump’s own expansive use of executive pardon power.”
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