Tim Walz just handed a get-out-of-deportation-free card to a man who sexually abused a 10-year-old girl. Marco Rubio tore it up and put him on a plane.
That’s the entire story. And every American needs to know it.
Tou Lue Vang came to the United States as a child from Laos. He pled guilty to criminal sexual conduct — repeated sexual abuse of a girl starting when she was just 10 years old. He reportedly described his crimes as a “minor thing.” He was placed on supervised release and should have been deported decades ago, but Laos wasn’t accepting large numbers of returnees at the time, so he remained in America, supervised, for twenty years.
When the Trump administration changed that equation — securing cooperation from Laos and beginning deportations — Vang was detained in December. Justice, finally, after two decades of waiting. He was about to face the consequences that should have come long ago.
Then Tim Walz intervened.
The Minnesota Board of Pardons — a three-person panel that includes the governor — granted Vang a full pardon in June. The pardon was based in part on a letter from his victim forgiving him. That letter is her right to write. It doesn’t change what he did. It doesn’t restore the childhood he took from her. And it absolutely does not obligate the United States government to allow a convicted child sex offender with no legal right to remain in this country to stay here indefinitely.
Walz decided otherwise. The pardon removed Vang’s conviction and, in the governor’s apparent calculation, should have blocked his deportation.
Marco Rubio had a different calculation. The Secretary of State revoked Vang’s legal status entirely — rendering the pardon irrelevant to the deportation question — and ICE took him into custody. As of Thursday, Tou Lue Vang has been removed from the United States and will never be permitted to return.
Rubio’s statement was direct and deserves to be read in full: “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.”
He’s right. This should not have been a difficult decision. A non-citizen convicted of sexually abusing a child — a child — has no legal or moral claim to remain on American soil. The pardon removes the conviction from Minnesota’s books. It does not create a right to citizenship. It does not override federal immigration authority. It does not undo what he did to that little girl.
Unless, of course, someone sentenced Vang to live alongside Tim Walz’s daughter. Bet the governor would never go for that, would he? Of course not.
But without having to deal with that possibility, Walz looked at all of this and sided with the offender over the victim, over the law, and over the safety of the American public.
Marco Rubio looked at the same situation and sided with America.
The contrast couldn’t be clearer — or more important heading into November.
