The Trump administration said Friday it had deported an illegal migrant from Laos who was pardoned last month by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz following his conviction more than two decades ago for raping a 10-year-old girl.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a video posted to X that he had revoked Tou Lue Vang’s legal status earlier this week following his clemency receipt June 10.
“As a result, federal agents took him into custody, and as of today, he has been removed from the United States,” Rubio said. “Because of our action, this foreign criminal will never pose a threat to any American ever again.”
Vang had been granted a pardon by the Minnesota Clemency Review Commission (CRC) — headed by Walz, state Attorney General Keith Ellison and state Chief Justice Natalie Hudson — erasing his criminal conviction.
The predator had been arrested in 2005 and copped to repeatedly assaulting the girl, blaming cultural norms for his conduct.
“He even tried to pay his victim for her silence,” Rubio said, “and called those heinous crimes ‘minor things.'”
Vang pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal sexual conduct, and received a removal order in 2006. He was also given a suspended 12-year prison sentence, 30 years of supervised probation and one year in a county workhouse, of which he served eight months.
Laos has no formal repatriation agreement with the US, but the Trump administration has stepped up pressure on the Southeast Asian nation to take in more deportees in the face of potential sanctions and travel bans.
In a letter to the CRC, Vang cited his years of rehabilitation and claimed he had taken full responsibility for his actions. However, Ramsey County prosecutors opposed his clemency bid, according to the New York Times, with an official claiming that Vang only received a relatively lenient sentence because his victim “was experiencing pressure from her family to not cooperate.”
Vang was born in a Thai refugee camp in 1983 and entered the US via California in 1994 during the Clinton administration, which granted him permanent residency, according to the Times.
He was detained in Minnesota late last year during President Trump’s “Operation Metro Surge” crackdown on illegal immigration and benefit fraud.
“Americans must not be forced by their elected leaders to live alongside foreign sex criminals, who have no right to begin with to reside in our country,” Rubio said Friday. “This administration will always stand with the American people and defend them from violent criminals.”
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