(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz last month issued a controversial pardon to a foreign national who pleaded guilty to raping a 10-year-old girl, in a head-scratching decision that effectively blocked his deportation.
The recipient of Walz’s pardon, Tou Lue Vang, was facing removal proceedings as the Trump administration moved to deport him to Laos, DHS said Wednesday.
Walz issued the pardon through the Minnesota Board of Pardons on June 10. The board is composed of three members: Walz, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson.
In 2005, Vang pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal sexual abuse of a 10-year-old girl, with the abuse reportedly occurring between 2002 and 2005, according to KSTP
Despite the severity of Vang’s acts, he received a 30-year probation sentence after prosecutors said the victim, then 12-years-old, “was experiencing pressure from her family to not cooperate.”
According to DHS, court records showed that Vang once tried to offer the girl “$10 to keep quiet about the sexual assaults” and reportedly tried to say the abuse was part of a “cultural thing.” He also reportedly told authorities that the girl should be arrested as well.
An immigration judge ordered Vang removed on Oct. 31, 2006. However, DHS spokesperson Lauren Bis said that Walz’s pardon effectively blocks his immediate deportation.
Vang entered the United States in 1994 and was granted legal status under the Clinton administration, according to DHS.
The Laotian national had not been deported previously because Laos did not accept deportees at the time, though that policy has since changed under the second Trump administration.
Vang himself cited the deportation threats as the reason he needed the pardon. He also claimed he had no living relatives in Laos, according to the left-wing New York Times.
Democratic prosecutors, including officials in the Ramsey County Attorney’s office, opposed the pardon because Vang had already received a lenient sentence. The elected prosecutor in that office, John Choi, is a Democrat.
Susan Gaertner, Choi’s predecessor and who led Vang’s prosecution at the time, also criticized the decision, calling it “unusual given the seriousness of the offense and the fact that the defendant did not receive significant consequences after he pled guilty.”
