Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is out here asking the philosophical questions nobody was asking after the Trump administration deported a convicted child sex offender he helped pardon. Tou Lue Vang, 42, a Laotian national who repeatedly sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl in St. Paul between 2002 and 2004, was removed from the country after Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked his legal status. As Trending Politics reported, Walz is now publicly defending the pardon he voted for on June 10 as part of the three-member Minnesota Board of Pardons, which also includes Attorney General Keith Ellison and Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson.
Walz's defense is really something. "Did that make us any safer?" he said Tuesday, according to KTTC. "Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable? Did it improve the idea that we can't all be judged by our worst day?"
Let's pause on that last one. Your "worst day" is when you burn the Thanksgiving turkey or back into a mailbox. Repeatedly sexually assaulting a child starting when she was in fourth grade is not a bad day. That is a series of deliberate, horrific crimes over a two-year period. Walz himself even acknowledged as much, saying, "These are horrific crimes. They often are." Which makes you wonder why he then voted to pardon the guy.
Rubio was considerably less philosophical about the whole thing. "Americans should never have to live in fear that foreign sex predators, shielded from deportation by their own elected officials, could endanger them or their children," he said. "That's why I terminated his legal status in the United States. Vang has now been removed from our country and will never pose a threat to any American ever again."
Vang entered the U.S. through California in 1994 and received legal status during the Clinton administration. After his conviction for the assaults in St. Paul, federal officials said he lost that status and was placed under a final removal order. Then the Minnesota Clemency Review Commission recommended a pardon, and the Board of Pardons granted it.
Walz tried to frame the pardon as separate from immigration, noting the board had denied clemency to other applicants facing immigration consequences. He also cited the victim's reported support for Vang's pardon, according to KSTP. A spokesperson for Ellison's office told MPR News the pardon did not actually shield Vang from deportation, which raises the obvious question of what exactly it was supposed to accomplish.
Homeland Security acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis was not feeling the nuance. "Governor Tim Walz's decision to pardon an illegal alien convicted child rapist so he can remain in our country is disgusting," she said. "These are the criminal illegal aliens he and his Minnesota sanctuary politicians are protecting."
The case has turned into yet another battleground in the ongoing war between the Trump administration and Democratic-run states over immigration enforcement. Walz wants to talk about rehabilitation and whether people should be defined by their worst acts. The Trump administration wants to talk about a convicted child predator who lost his legal status and got pardoned by state officials anyway. One of those arguments is a lot easier to explain at a town hall than the other.
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