A Child Rapist Was Days From Deportation. Walz’s Board Pardoned Him.
On June 10, 2026, the Minnesota Board of Pardons voted unanimously to pardon Tou Lue Vang, 42, a Laotian national who pleaded guilty in 2006 to first-degree criminal sexual conduct for repeatedly assaulting a 10-year-old girl. The three-member board that erased his conviction: Gov. Tim Walz (D), Attorney General Keith Ellison (D), and Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says the pardon landed roughly a week before Vang was scheduled for removal to Laos — and the conviction the board wiped out was the very thing that made him deportable in the first place.
The Department of Homeland Security called it “madness.” Walz’s office and Ellison’s office point to a letter the victim herself wrote asking for mercy, and say DHS is “lying” about whether the pardon shields him from deportation at all. Republican critics went further — they say the governor traded public safety to, in one legislator’s words, “stick it to Trump.” Here is what the record actually shows.
- 3-0voteunanimous Board of Pardons vote to grant the pardon, June 10, 2026 — MN AG's office
- 10years oldage of the victim Vang admitted repeatedly assaulting, 2002–2004 — 2006 court filings
- ~1weekgap between the pardon and Vang's scheduled ICE removal to Laos — ICE statement
- 1994arrivedyear Vang entered the U.S. as a child refugee before losing status on his conviction
The action itself is not in dispute. At its June 10, 2026 meeting, the Minnesota Board of Pardons voted to grant Tou Lue Vang a pardon that sets aside his 2006 felony conviction for first-degree criminal sexual conduct. The three members — Gov. Tim Walz (D), Attorney General Keith Ellison (D), and Chief Justice Natalie Hudson — were unanimous. Ellison’s office confirmed the vote and described “an exhaustive process which included a statement of support for the pardon from the victim, a recommendation to grant the pardon from the Clemency Review Commission and a large number of community support letters.”
The reason this ordinary-sounding clemency detonated into a national story is the timing and the immigration stakes. Vang came to the United States as a child refugee from Laos in 1994 and became a lawful permanent resident. His 2006 conviction stripped that status: on October 31, 2006, a federal immigration judge ordered him removed from the country. For years the order sat unexecuted — Laos historically accepted few deportees — until 2026, when ICE moved to carry it out. The pardon arrived, by ICE’s account, about a week before his scheduled removal.
The act: a Minnesota pardon setting aside Vang’s felony first-degree criminal-sexual-conduct conviction — not a commutation of a prison term (he never served one), but an erasure of the conviction on his record.
The vote: 3-0. All three board members — the governor, the attorney general, and the chief justice — voted yes.
The stated basis: the victim’s written support, a Clemency Review Commission recommendation, and community letters.
The consequence in dispute: whether erasing the conviction also erases the legal ground for his deportation. DHS says yes. Minnesota’s attorney general says no.
Vang was not accused. He was convicted — on his own guilty plea. According to the 2006 court filings, Vang repeatedly sexually assaulted a girl beginning when she was about 10 years old, over a span running from roughly 2002 to 2004. He pleaded guilty to first-degree criminal sexual conduct in a plea agreement that spared him prison time. There is no pending case here and no presumption of innocence to weigh: the conduct is a matter of adjudicated fact.
The Department of Homeland Security, quoting those same filings, added two details that have driven much of the public reaction. On at least one occasion, DHS said, Vang offered the child $10 to stay quiet about the abuse. And when questioned by police, he attempted to justify the conduct by telling investigators that for him “it is a cultural thing…to marry and have sex with girls as young as 12.” These are the facts the pardon does not undo; they remain in the record regardless of the conviction’s legal status.
Accuracy matters here, because the shorthand “Walz pardoned a child rapist” overstates one man’s power and understates the responsibility of the others. Minnesota is one of the few states that vests clemency not in the governor alone but in a three-member Board of Pardons: the governor, the attorney general, and the chief justice of the state Supreme Court. For most of state history, a pardon required all three to agree — a single “no” killed it.
That changed in a 2023 reform. Under current law, a pardon passes if the governor and at least one other board member vote yes. In other words, Gov. Walz (D) could not have granted this pardon by himself — but no pardon could have passed over his objection, either. His vote was necessary. So was one of the other two. In this case all three said yes, so the accountability is shared, not solitary: the governor, the attorney general, and the chief justice each signed off. A separate nine-member Clemency Review Commission, created by the same 2023 reform, vetted the petition first and recommended granting it.
DHS condemns Gov. Walz after Minnesota's Board of Pardons cleared a man convicted of child sexual assault — a decision the agency says could block his deportation.
That distinction cuts both ways. It rebuts the loosest version of the attack — this was not a governor unilaterally springing a predator on a whim. But it also removes an excuse. Walz was not outvoted, did not dissent, and did not use the leverage the law hands him. The chief executive of Minnesota looked at this file — the plea, the victim’s age, the $10, the statement to police — and voted to erase the conviction.
The Trump administration responded on July 1 with a formal DHS statement titled, in full capitals, “MINNESOTA MADNESS.” The agency accused Walz and, in its words, “his fellow sanctuary politicians” of shielding a convicted child rapist from removal. A DHS spokesperson called the decision “disgusting,” and the agency argued the pardon “will take away this child rapist’s qualifying convictions that made him removable from the United States.”
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin (R), sworn in earlier this year, amplified the condemnation directly, calling the decision to pardon “an illegal alien child rapist” horrific. U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN), the House majority whip, said he was angered by the pardon as well. The reaction was not confined to Washington: it dominated Minnesota’s own local newscasts for days.
MINNESOTA MADNESS: Gov. Tim Walz and his fellow sanctuary politicians pardoned a criminal illegal alien convicted of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl — a decision that could shield him from deportation just as we moved to remove him.
Paraphrased commentary · not a verbatim post
Truth Social · paraphrasing the DHS “Minnesota Madness” statement of July 1, 2026
A Minnesota governor voting to PARDON an illegal alien child rapist so he can stay in our country is horrific. We were a week from removing him. Minnesotans deserve better than leaders who put a predator ahead of a 10-year-old girl.
Paraphrased commentary · not a verbatim post
Truth Social · paraphrasing DHS Secretary Mullin's public condemnation, reported by Townhall and Breitbart
The sharpest framing came from Minnesota Republicans, who cast the pardon not as misplaced mercy but as a political stunt aimed at the White House. State Sen. Julia Coleman (R), the Senate assistant minority leader, put it bluntly: “This is a reckless abuse of power that totally undermines justice for the victim and betrays every Minnesotan. The Governor offered up the safety of our communities so he could ‘stick it to Trump’ and score points with his far-left extremists.” The conservative outlet PJ Media ran the charge as a headline: Walz “literally pardoned a child abuser to spite Trump.”
“The Governor offered up the safety of our communities so he could 'stick it to Trump' and score points with his far-left extremists.”
State Sen. Julia Coleman (R) · Minnesota Senate Assistant Minority Leader · July 2026
The motive claim — that Walz acted to spite the president — is the critics’ charge, not an established fact, and we mark it as such. The board did not say it was resisting a deportation to embarrass Washington; it said it was honoring a victim’s request. The timing, one week before removal, is what makes the “spite Trump” reading land: whatever the stated reason, the practical effect of erasing the conviction was to complicate an active federal removal. Readers can weigh the stated rationale against the timing themselves — but they are entitled to both facts.
Federal agencies are blasting Gov. Tim Walz over the Minnesota Board of Pardons' decision to pardon a man convicted years ago of a child sex offense, weeks before his planned deportation.
The defense rests almost entirely on the victim. In a letter to the board, she wrote: “What happened to me was wrong, but I have had many years to think about this. I have made my peace with it. I forgive him.” She asked that Vang’s family be allowed to stay together, writing that his children need their father and that “the family has suffered enough.” Ellison’s office notes that such statements of support carry real weight in clemency review, and that the board has denied pardons to three other men convicted of sex crimes who were facing deportation. Whether one victim’s forgiveness should override the public-safety and immigration consequences of erasing a child-rape conviction is precisely the judgment the three officials made — and the one voters can now judge in turn.
One factual question is still genuinely open: does the pardon actually stop the deportation? Here the two sides are not merely spinning — they are describing two different legal mechanisms, and both are partly right.
DHS’s position: the 2006 criminal-sexual-conduct conviction is the “qualifying conviction” that made Vang removable, so setting it aside removes the legal basis for that specific removal order. Ellison’s office fired back that “DHS is lying through their teeth about this pardon” and that “it does not protect Vang from deportation.” The reconciling truth, per immigration-law analysts cited across the coverage: a pardon can eliminate a conviction as a ground of removability, but it does not confer lawful status — a person who is in the country unlawfully can still be removed on that separate basis. So the pardon likely blunts the sharpest, fastest deportation route without granting Vang any right to remain.
A convicted child rapist, on a two-decade-old removal order, was days from deportation. Minnesota’s three top clemency officials — two of them elected Democrats — voted 3-0 to erase the conviction that made him removable.
They did it on the strength of the victim’s own plea for mercy, and they insist the pardon does not actually free him from deportation. Federal officials call that a fig leaf and the vote “madness.”
Both of those things can be true at once. The victim’s forgiveness was real; so was the decision, by officials sworn to public safety, to weigh it above every other consideration on a first-degree child-sexual-conduct case — the week ICE came to collect.
