A man who raped a 10-year-old child repeatedly is now back in his native Laos — no thanks to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who had pardoned the man who had a removal order due to his criminal history.
It took intervention from Secretary of State Marco Rubio to get the man’s legal status revoked after the pardon.
But the biggest paper in Minnesota, the Minnesota Star Tribune, is hailing Gov. Walz’s decision. Their reason to allow a child rapist to walk the streets of Minnesota when it could be deported? The events of Jan. 6, 2021, of course.
One does have to applaud the folks at the Star Tribune for ingenuity, if here unleashed in a manner that is profoundly sick. Tou Lue Vang, the man in question, told investigators he raped the girl in question because in his society, this was considered normal. In fact, he told police this was “a mistake,” but “a minor thing,” and he didn’t mean the victim’s age. Apparently, child rape was little more severe than a fender-bender in his mind.
The fact that he didn’t receive a removal order until earlier this year should have been an outrage in and of itself, but what happened next was why we’re still discussing this. In the intervening years, the convicted child rapist (who ended up just spending eight months in confinement at a county facility despite receiving a 12-year state prison sentence initially) has built a life in the United States, with children of his own.
This was effectively the reason behind the decision to pardon him, which received a 4-2 vote from the Minnesota Clemency Review Commission and a unanimous decision to pardon from Walz, Democrat state Attorney General Keith Ellison, and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson, a Walz appointee.
“The victim supports this pardon. His [Vang’s] wife stayed and has forgiven. He also [has] immigration concerns. He has remorse and was discharged from probation,” said the head of the Minnesota Clemency Review Commission in her decision.
President Donald Trump’s administration was wholly unmoved, and Rubio terminated the sex abuser’s legal status and deported him.
“Under President Trump, criminal illegal aliens who rape children will be found, arrested, and removed — and Democrat politicians will not stand in the way,” a White House statement read.
Walz fumed after Vang’s removal.
“Did that make us any safer? Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable?” Walz said at a media briefing.
“Did it improve the idea that we can’t all be judged by our worst day? And I want to be very clear,” Walz added, “These are horrific crimes. They often are.”
The answer to all those rhetorical questions, by the way, is yes: We have one less child rapist in our country, that child rapist is not in the same country as his children are, and we often have to be judged by our worst actions, because it shows what we are capable of. (Walz seems to have left out the fact that he was being judged for his worst days, since this happened repeatedly.)
.@GovTimWalz on why ICE shouldn’t have deported this child rapist: “we can’t all be judged by our worst day.”
For Tou Lue Vang this wasn’t just one “worst day” — it was YEARS of repeatedly sexually assaulting a girl starting when she was 10.
Just disgraceful. https://t.co/QCzSnYh4zA pic.twitter.com/hJ2TRlan4k
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) July 15, 2026
This lame-duck move to help a sex offender dodge expulsion from the country should have been universally unpopular, but it found at least one defender in the Minnesota Star Tribune newsroom. From their “Cheers and Jeers” section on Friday, attributed to Rochelle Olson but assumedly passing through the hands of some editor who still didn’t find this outrage distasteful:
Cheers to Gov. Tim Walz: The governor refused to back down from his vote to pardon a Hmong man convicted of felony sexual assault in 2006. It’s significant that Tou Lue Vang needed only two of three votes from the state Board of Pardons, but he received unanimous support. In addition to Walz, the board includes Attorney General Keith Ellison and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson. Before her vote, the chief cited the letter of support for Vang submitted by the assault survivor. Also, Vang had not committed additional crimes in the past two decades. The Pardons Board makes weighty, life-changing decisions after studying the cases and history. In this case, Vang’s pardon made him a political punching bag. Secretary of State Marco Rubio deported him to Laos. Vang’s actions 20 years ago were awful, but so were the violent protests at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and those folks received presidential pardons. Of the deportation, Walz said, “And by just picking them up and taking them out with no due process, it just seems unfair.” Cheers to Walz for standing behind the pardon.
The degeneracy of the modern left would be impossible to exaggerate because it is impossible to exaggerate infinity. pic.twitter.com/oCzGZb9AwD
— Jeremy Carl (@realJeremyCarl) July 19, 2026
So, let’s go through those depraved and illogical excuses seriatim.
First, he was not just convicted of felony sexual assault, but of repeatedly raping a pre-pubescent girl. If there is anything that modern criminal science has taught us, it is that child sex offenders are the worst of the worst, capable of inflicting the most harm upon the maximum number of people, and the sooner they are stopped, the better.
As for the unanimous support, two politicians from the same party and one judge who was appointed by one of the two politicians does not a strong case make, particularly when Walz and Ellison are two of the principals.
Then: “Also, Vang had not committed additional crimes in the past two decades.” Not that we know of, but sure, let’s accept that. He should have spent those two decades not committing those additional crimes back in Laos.
Ah, but the pièce de résistance: “Vang’s actions 20 years ago were awful, but so were the violent protests at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and those folks received presidential pardons.” Remember the “Family Guy” episode where Lois ends up winning the mayoralty of Quahog by simply answering every question with “9/11”? It’s as if an entire generation of millennial stoners memorized that playbook, lived through the Capitol incursion, and thought because that was their 9/11, they could get away with doing that in real life, not on an animated comedy.
In such cases, of course, those were U.S. citizens who had been overcharged, sometimes for mere chaos tourism, by a politically motivated Department of Justice. In this case, it’s a man who was undercharged and undersentenced who now gets a politically motivated pardon by Democrats who believe that slogans like “no person is illegal” are somehow policy. This was a child rapist who didn’t even serve significant consequences and who should have been deported ages ago. Thank God we finally have a president willing to do it.
As for Walz, we can also thank God he’ll be gone next January. The Democrats, given Minnesota’s history, will likely stay. The same, unfortunately, can be said for the degenerates inside the Minnesota Star Tribune newsroom.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
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