Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that he revoked the legal status of Laotian national Tou Lue Vang after he was pardoned by Governor Tim Walz (D-MN).
Rubio explained in a video shared on X that Vang was “convicted of repeatedly sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl in the state of Minnesota. He even tried to pay his victim for her silence and he called his heinous crimes a ‘minor thing.'”
Days before Vang was set to be deported, Walz issued a pardon, “setting him free to once again endanger the children of America,” Rubio condemned.
Upon revoking Vang’s legal status, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) took him into custody. He has since been removed from the United States.
“Americans must never 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 declared. “This administration will always stand with the American people, and defend them from violent criminals.”
Last month, the Minnesota Clemency Review Commission voted to grant a pardon for Vang, who was convicted in 2006 of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. He was set to be removed from the country, although the pardon may now impede his removal.
DHS explained that court filings note that Vang repeatedly sexually assaulted a girl between 2002 and 2004. He attempted to justify the actions to policy, saying that “it is a cultural thing…to marry and have sex with girls as young as 12.”
Acting Assistant Secretary for DHS Lauren Bis said in a statement at the time that the pardon was “disgusting.”
