Imagine being so consumed by hatred for Donald Trump and his immigration agenda that you would hand a full pardon to a man who sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl for four years, just to keep him from being deported.
You do not have to imagine it. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) actually did it.
Last month, Walz pardoned Tou Lue Vang, a 42-year-old illegal immigrant convicted of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, wiping his record clean and shielding him from deportation to Laos. It’s bad enough that the pardon erased Vang's conviction entirely, but what makes it worse is that Walz did it to rescue him from the consequences that Trump's immigration enforcement was finally about to deliver.
Vang pleaded guilty in 2006 to repeatedly sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl over four years, starting in 2002. When police arrested him in 2005, he did not deny what he did. He justified it, telling officers it was a "cultural thing" to "marry and have sex with girls as young as 12." According to the Department of Homeland Security, Vang also tried to pay his victim $10 to keep her quiet while the abuse was happening.
Vang’s plea deal kept him out of prison, but it cost him his legal immigration status, and he received a final order of removal in October 2006. Instead, Vang stuck around for nearly two decades until Trump's Minnesota immigration operation, dubbed Operation Metro Surge, finally caught up with him last year. Records show Vang applied for a pardon in July 2025, presumably sensing his window was closing.
Walz gave it to him.
The pardon came from a three-person panel that included Walz, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), and Minnesota Chief Justice Natalie Hudson. You can’t even pretend that Trump’s immigration policies weren’t a factor because, as the Daily Mail reported, “Ellison also cited President Donald Trump's expansive use of executive pardon power in his statement defending his pardon of the pedophile.”
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DHS spokeswoman Lauren Bis laid out exactly what happened here. "Tou Lue Vang lost his legal status following his conviction for repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl," she said, adding that the pardon wipes his conviction from the record entirely. A DHS spokesperson called Walz "disgusting" for granting the pardon. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin went further, calling the move "horrific" in a statement on X.
"This evil alien from Laos repeatedly sexually assaulted a 10-year-old child," Mullin said. "These are the illegal alien criminals sanctuary politicians like Tim Walz are protecting over American citizens."
Mullin is right, obviously, and Walz just proved it in the most grotesque way possible.
This is Trump Derangement Syndrome in its purest form. Walz pardoned Vang because Trump wanted him gone, and spiting Trump apparently matters more to Walz than punishing a child rapist.
Remember when President Trump said he’d focus his deportation efforts on the worst of the worst, and Democrats insisted he was really targeting “innocent” illegal immigrants? Does anyone honestly believe that claim now? If Democrats like Tim Walz are so consumed by Trump Derangement Syndrome that they’ll pardon a convicted child rapist to keep him from being deported, the issue was never about protecting non-criminal illegal immigrants. It was always about resisting Trump. When a sitting governor will shield a convicted child predator from deportation to spite Trump, you’ve reached rock bottom.
And Walz just keeps on digging.
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