The Department of Homeland Security deported Tou Lue Vang on Friday, the Laotian national Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pardoned last month in an effort to keep him in the country.

Vang, 42, entered the United States illegally and built a life in Minnesota that included, by his own admission, sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl. He pleaded guilty in 2006 to first-degree criminal sexual conduct after admitting he abused the girl over four years, starting in 2002. When police arrested him in 2005, he offered no denial. Instead, he told investigators that marrying and having sex with girls as young as 12 was a cultural practice.

The Department of Homeland Security said Vang also offered his victim $10 to stay quiet while the abuse continued.

By pleading guilty, Vang avoided prison, but lost legal status. A judge issued him a final removal order in October 2006, and under any normal enforcement regime, that would have been the end of the story. Instead, Vang stayed in the country for nearly two decades, until Trump administration agents caught up with him last year through Operation Metro Surge, a Minnesota-based immigration enforcement effort.

Records show Vang applied for a pardon in July 2025, anticipating his inevitable deportation. Walz granted it through the state's three-member pardon board, which also includes Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minnesota Chief Justice Natalie Hudson. The pardon wiped Vang's conviction from his record entirely.

"The Minnesota Board of Pardons made a unanimous decision to grant Tou Vang this pardon after 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," Ellison's office said in a statement.

The New York Times noted that Democratic governors "have long faced scrutiny for pardoning immigrants with criminal records who have served their sentences, in an effort to slow or halt their deportations. They often weigh a number of factors as part of their decision, including the severity of the crime," and added that "Mr. Vang's situation is notable in that it involves a sex offense against a child, a type of crime that is widely reviled."

The Department of Homeland Security condemned the decision to pardon him.

"These are the criminal illegal aliens [Walz] and his Minnesota sanctuary politicians are protecting," Lauren Bis, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement. "Tou Lue Vang lost his legal status following his conviction for repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl."

While the pardon effectively removed the conviction that was the basis for his deportation, the Department of Homeland Security announced Friday that ICE had taken Vang into custody and removed him from the United States despite the efforts of Walz and Ellison.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the arrest himself in a video posted to X. "Just weeks ago, a convicted sex offender and a foreign national was shielded from deportation by the Governor of Minnesota," Rubio said. "Laotian national Tou Lue Vang was convicted of repeatedly sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl in the state of Minnesota. He even tried to pay his victim for her silence. And he called his heinous crimes a minor thing." Rubio noted the pardon came "just days before this foreign sex offender was scheduled to be deported," and said Walz "issued him a pardon setting him free to once again endanger the children of America." He described the response in plain terms. "This week I revoked his legal status in the United States and as a result, federal agents took him into custody. And as of today, he has been removed from the United States. Because of our action, this foreign criminal will never pose a threat to any American ever again." Rubio closed with a broader point about the arrangement voters are being asked to accept. "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. This administration will always stand with the American people and defend them from violent criminals."

The White House was even more blunt. "This case exposes the depravity of the Radical Left: they will literally pardon child rapists and defy federal law to protect criminal illegals," it said in a Friday statement.