Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked the legal status of a convicted child sex offender pardoned by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and ICE removed him from the country, a direct federal override of the governor's clemency decision.

Tou Lue Vang, a 42-year-old Laotian national convicted of first-degree criminal sexual conduct for repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl in St. Paul between 2002 and 2004, was deported to Laos on Friday after Rubio terminated his legal status. The deportation came roughly a month after Minnesota's Board of Pardons, comprising Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Chief Justice Natalie Hudson, unanimously granted Vang a pardon on June 10.

That pardon erased the criminal conviction that had anchored Vang's deportation order. Without it, federal authorities would have had a harder path to removal. Rubio found another one.

Rubio moved within days to strip Vang's status and force removal

Rubio announced the deportation on his official X account Friday, laying the sequence out in plain terms: Vang was convicted, set to be deported, pardoned by Walz, and then stripped of his legal status by the State Department before ICE carried out the removal.

In a statement, Rubio framed the action as a matter of public safety and a rebuke of Walz's decision.

"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."

Rubio added that "because of our action, this foreign criminal will never pose a threat to any American ever again." The Washington Examiner reported that Rubio specifically terminated Vang's legal status after the pardon removed the criminal sexual conduct conviction underlying the original deportation order, meaning the State Department treated the pardon as creating a gap and moved to close it through a separate legal mechanism.

DHS acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis put the blame squarely on the governor. "ICE deported Tou Vang, an illegal alien convicted child rapist," Bis said. "Tim Walz pardoned this sex criminal in an attempt to allow him to remain in our country."

Walz did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller prior to publication. But the governor has since questioned whether the deportation made anyone safer, a defense that only deepened the political fallout.

Vang pleaded guilty in 2005 and tried to blame the 10-year-old victim

The underlying crime is not ambiguous. Vang pleaded guilty in 2005 to first-degree criminal sexual conduct for repeatedly raping a 10-year-old girl over a two-year period beginning in 2002. He was sentenced in 2006. A DHS press release noted that Vang attempted to convince police the victim was equally guilty and should be arrested.

Vang also told police that it was "a cultural thing [...] to marry and have sex with girls as young as 12", a statement the Daily Caller reported from what appears to be an edited version of his original remarks to law enforcement.

The New York Post reported that Vang also tried to pay his victim for her silence. His conviction triggered a removal order in 2006, meaning federal authorities had sought his deportation for nearly two decades before the Board of Pardons intervened.

Minnesota's three-member pardon board voted unanimously, days before deportation

The pardon came from Minnesota's Board of Pardons, a three-member body consisting of the governor, the attorney general, and the chief justice of the state supreme court. All three, Walz, Ellison, and Hudson, voted to grant clemency on June 10, just days before Vang was scheduled to be removed from the country.

The New York Times, as cited in the Daily Caller's reporting, noted that Walz and other pardon officials acknowledged the threat of deportation facing an individual is a factor considered in pardon review. That acknowledgment is telling: it means the board was aware that granting the pardon could block federal immigration enforcement, and it granted the pardon anyway.

The timing alone raises hard questions. A man convicted of raping a child, who blamed the child, who tried to buy her silence, was granted clemency by the state's highest officials at the last possible moment before the federal government could remove him. Walz has since deflected criticism of the decision, but the sequence speaks for itself.

Rubio's override exposed the limits of state clemency against federal immigration authority

The case set up a direct clash between state clemency power and federal immigration enforcement. Walz's pardon erased the state criminal conviction, but it could not erase the federal government's authority over immigration status. Rubio exploited that distinction, revoking Vang's legal status through the State Department rather than relying on the now-vacated criminal conviction.

Minnesota is classified as a sanctuary state by the Department of Justice, which limits how much local and state authorities cooperate with federal immigration agents. That designation added another layer to the confrontation: a sanctuary state's governor used clemency power to shield a convicted sex offender from deportation, and the federal government found a workaround within days.

Fox News reported that the Trump administration's action rendered Walz's pardon effectively moot on the immigration front, the state conviction may be erased in Minnesota's records, but Vang is now in Laos, not in the United States.

The political consequences for Walz are mounting. Just The News reported that the case has drawn national outrage and calls for the governor's impeachment or recall. Conservative commentator Glenn Beck put it bluntly: "Raping a child is not a bad day. It is a horrific crime that should always carry the heaviest consequences."

Walz's record of controversial decisions in Minnesota has drawn scrutiny before. The governor recently appointed the judge from the George Floyd trial to a new state council, a move that also drew sharp criticism. A pattern is forming: Walz makes decisions that prioritize progressive signaling over public accountability, and then acts surprised when the backlash arrives.

Rubio's statement left no ambiguity about the administration's posture

Rubio closed his public remarks with a broad declaration of intent.

"This administration will always stand with the American people and defend them from violent criminals."

That framing, elected leaders forcing communities to live alongside convicted sex offenders versus a federal government willing to act, is the political fault line the case exposes. Walz and his fellow board members chose to erase the conviction of a man who raped a child and blamed the child for it. The federal government chose to deport him anyway.

The state of Minnesota, meanwhile, remains on the DOJ's list of sanctuary jurisdictions, a classification that limits cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. In this case, the sanctuary framework did not save Vang. But the fact that a governor used his pardon power to try tells voters everything they need to know about where his priorities lie.

When a governor's idea of justice means pardoning a child rapist to block his deportation, the problem is not the federal government's response. The problem is the governor.