Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked the legal status of Laotian national Tou Lue Vang, a convicted child sex predator recently pardoned by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, successfully clearing the path for federal immigration authorities to arrest and deport him from the United States without further legal delays.
The high-profile federal intervention follows a controversial unanimous decision by the Minnesota Board of Pardons on June 10, which granted clemency to Vang. The state pardon wiped his criminal record completely clean, a move critics argued was explicitly designed to shield him from longstanding federal deportation orders.
Vang originally arrived in the United States as a child refugee from Laos back in 1994. In 2006, he was convicted of first-degree criminal sexual conduct after admitting to repeatedly assaulting a ten-year-old girl over a period spanning several years.