Secretary of State Marco Rubio says federal authorities have deported Tou Lue Vang, a Laotian national whose criminal conviction was previously pardoned by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
After Rubio intervened, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took Vang into custody and removed him from the United States.
The 42-year-old pleaded guilty in 2005 to repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl. He avoided prison under a plea agreement and instead completed supervised release.
Rubio said federal officials overcame the “roadblocks” created by Walz’s pardon to ensure Vang “will never again pose a threat to the American people.”
“Just weeks ago, a foreign child rapist was freed to once again endanger America’s children after receiving a pardon from Minnesota Governor Tim Walz,” Rubio told Fox News Digital. “Tue Lue Vang admitted to committing heinous crimes against a 10-year-old girl in Minnesota. He attempted to pay his victim for her silence and dismissed his acts of child abuse as a ‘minor thing.'”
Vang was convicted in 2006 of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. He repeatedly raped the girl between 2002 and 2004, and told authorities after he was arrested that “it is a cultural thing… to marry and have sex with girls as young as 12.”
Rubio told Fox News Digital, “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.”
“That’s why I terminated his legal status in the United States,” he continued. “Vang has now been removed from our country and will never pose a threat to any American ever again.”
Minnesota’s Board of Pardons is composed of Walz, state Attorney General Keith Ellison and state Chief Justice Natalie Hudson, who let Vang off the hook on June 10.
In defending its decision, the board noted that Vang had arrived in the United States as a child, had become a taxpaying member of his community, and had expressed what it described as genuine remorse for his crimes.
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