Tou Lue Vang
On June 10, the three-member Minnesota Board of Pardons granted a pardon to 42-year-old Tou Lue Vang, a Laotian national facing imminent deportation due to a 2005 conviction for child sex abuse. DHS denounced that act of clemency, which has thrust the state’s governor (and 2024 Democratic vice-presidential candidate) Tim Walz back into the immigration spotlight. The board plainly had the legal authority to exercise clemency; the only question is whether the members should have used it in this case.
Tou Lue Vang
According to the New York Times, Vang was born in a Thai refugee camp in 1983 and entered the United States as a refugee over a decade later (when he would have been about 11), eventually settling with his family in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
In 2006, he was convicted in state court in Minnesota for criminal sexual conduct in the first degree for abuse of a female minor between 2002 and approximately 2005 (when he’d have been about 22).
As per the Times:
Mr. Vang was around 18 when he first began abusing the girl, who was then 10 years old. Mr. Vang initially tried to defend his actions upon his arrest in 2005.
When a detective interviewed Mr. Vang, he acknowledged having had sexual contact with the girl and called it a “minor thing,” according to a criminal complaint. Mr. Vang blamed cultural norms in Thailand, according to the complaint.
While his conviction records aren’t publicly available, a local outlet reports he pled guilty on October 31, 2005, to a charge of “first-degree criminal sexual conduct ... penetration or contact with a person under 13 years old by an actor more than 36 months older”.
That tracks acts criminalized by section 609.342, subd. 1a(e) of the Minnesota criminal statutes, and under subd. 2(a) of that provision, the maximum penalty for such an offense is imprisonment for up to 30 years and a fine of up to $40,000.
Vang was sentenced in February 2006 to 12 years imprisonment for that crime, but that sentence was stayed, though he did receive 30 years of supervised probation (which was discharged in March 2019) and also served eight months of a one-year sentence in a county workhouse.
Criminal sexual conduct in the first degree under Minnesota law is an aggravated felony as defined in section 101(a)(43)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), that is, a crime of “murder, rape, or sexual abuse of a minor”, rendering Vang removable under section 237(a)(2)(A)(iii) of the INA.
Consequently, Vang was ordered removed from the United States in late October 2006, but because Laos at the time was a “recalcitrant” country — that is, one that refused to accept returns of its deported nationals from the United States — Vang’s removal order went unexecuted for nearly two decades.
“Congratulations!”
Under pressure from DHS and DOS, however, Laos began accepting a limited number of deportees from the United States in May 2025.
It’s not clear when Vang first submitted his petition for a pardon, but he was arrested during DHS’s “Operation Metro Surge” in December and his removal was imminent when the state’s three-member Board of Pardons — which consists of Gov. Tim Walz (D), Attorney General Keith Ellison (D), and “nonpartisan” Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson — unanimously granted that pardon on June 10.
The board’s approval followed a split vote by the nine-member Minnesota Clemency Review Commission on Vang’s application in April, with four members of the commission voting in favor of Vang’s request and two opposing it, with three absentees.
As the Times noted, however:
The Ramsey County attorney’s office, which handled Mr. Vang’s prosecution, had opposed a pardon. Tami McConkey, an official at the office, wrote that Mr. Vang had received a lenient sentence of 30 years’ probation in part because the victim in the case, who was then 12, “was experiencing pressure from her family to not cooperate.”
Nonetheless, the victim filed a (seemingly tepid) letter of support for her abuser’s pardon request, stating in part, “What happened to me was wrong, but I have had many years to think about this . ... I have made peace with it. I forgive him.”
That victim support statement apparently played a large role in the ultimate pardon, however, because both Walz’s and Ellison’s offices referenced it in their comments to the Times, and the outlet quotes Judge Hudson as stating at the hearing that, “we’ve seen some evidence here of rehabilitation, but obviously the victim’s statement here is very significant for me”.
Consequently, on June 11 Vang received a letter from the Minnesota Clemency Review Commission that began: “The Minnesota Board of Pardons voted to grant your pardon at its meeting on June 10, 2026. Congratulations!”
That’s likely boilerplate language the commission includes in all of its parole-grant letters, but maybe less ebullience may have been in order for this one.
The Effect of State Pardons on Aliens’ Deportability
Section 237(a)(2)(A)(vi) of the INA provides that an alien cannot be removed on the criminal deportation grounds in section 237(a)(2) for, among other things, an aggravated felony, if the alien “has been granted a full and unconditional” presidential or gubernatorial pardon for the conviction that formed the basis for such charge.
Vang must still reopen his October 2006 removal proceedings under section 240(c)(7) of the INA and have the aggravated felony ground of removal dismissed to escape deportation, but while the Supreme Court has held immigration adjudicators have “broad discretion” to deny such motions, the justices have also concluded “the purpose of a motion to reopen is to ensure a proper and lawful disposition”.
Arguably, and likely inescapably, “proper disposition” here likely means the immigration court’s dismissal of its 2006 removal order, as that order relies on Vang’s conviction and that conviction is no longer a valid basis for removal by statute.
“MINNESOTA MADNESS”
Not that DHS will be happy with that outcome.
Although the Minnesota state board issued its pardon to Vang in early June, the case flew under the radar nationally until July 1, when DHS issued a press release headlined, “MINNESOTA MADNESS: Governor Tim Walz Pardons Criminal Illegal Alien Convicted of Sexually Assaulting a 10-Year-Old Girl”.
The department didn’t hold back in describing the offense, noting in particular that Vang had “claimed that the victim” — again, who was 10 years old at points during the abuse — “was just as guilty as him and should also be arrested”.
And although both the Clemency Review Commission and the board played roles in the ultimate outcome, DHS pinned the blame for the pardon squarely on Minnesota’s chief executive, with Lauren Bis, acting assistant secretary, complaining:
Governor Tim Walz's decision to pardon an illegal alien convicted child rapist so he can remain in our country is disgusting . ... 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. [Emphasis in the original.]
As I’ve reported in the past, ICE enforcement has been a point of contention between Walz and Trump II, with the governor referring to immigration officers as “Donald Trump's modern-day Gestapo”, then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem telling Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) to “grow up, get some maturity, act like people who are responsible, who want people to be safe and the right thing to be done”, and Trump accusing Walz and Frey of “inciting Insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric” that month.
Tensions had cooled, however, after Trump sent “Border Czar” Tom Homan, to Minneapolis in late January following the deaths of two U.S. citizens in immigration enforcement operations there, as Trump posted on Truth Social on January 26:
It looks like this low-key “era of good feelings” between the administration and Walz is over, or at least DHS is using what even the Times had to admit was “a type of crime that is widely reviled” to attack the governor over the board’s pardon of Vang, almost definitely allowing him to duck the immigration consequences of that offense.
Back to Politics
Keep in mind Vang was an adult who had lived in the United States for years when this offense occurred, and therefore he had plenty of time to conform to our cultural norms on sexual contact with children, regardless of whatever is considered acceptable back home.
That he committed that “widely reviled” offense anyway and attempted to blame his victim (of tender years) suggests either that: (1) Vang has a uniquely warped view of sexual mores; or (2) Minnesota has real work to do in assimilating members of its immigrant communities.
Perhaps the governor, attorney general, and Mayor Frey could spend more time integrating newcomers in their state and less time lecturing immigration officers, but regardless, Walz and Ellison have lost any moral authority they had claimed back in January over ICE on enforcement.
There are two facets to the case of a Laotian national facing imminent removal for a 2006 child sex abuse conviction before Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and the pardon board granted him a reprieve: one legal; one political. The state plainly had legal authority to extend clemency for that offense, but whether it was a smart political move to allow Tou Vang to duck deportation is now up to Minnesota voters to decide.