Tue Lue Vang offered his 10-year-old victim $10 to keep quiet. When investigators finally caught up with him, he told them the sexual abuse was "a minor thing" and "a cultural thing in Thailand to marry and have sex with girls as young as 12."

Minnesota's government gave him a pardon anyway. And the records show exactly why.

Vang, a 42-year-old Laotian national who entered the United States in 1994, was convicted of criminal sexual conduct for abusing a child between 2002 and 2004. The victim was 10 when it started. A Ramsey County court sentenced him to 12 years in prison and 30 years of supervised probation. He served 8 months at a county workhouse.

Eight months. For years of sexually abusing a child.

After being discharged from probation in 2019, Vang applied for clemency through Minnesota's Clemency Review Commission. On June 10, 2026, the commission voted 4-2 to recommend a pardon. Commissioner Zach Lindstrom, who voted in favor, said it was a "very tough case" but argued that "the kids not having a father is not in the best interest of society." Commissioners Artika Roller, Nadine Graves, and Perry Moriearty also voted to recommend the pardon.

The Minnesota Board of Pardons — comprised of Governor Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson — granted the pardon. All three signed off.

Here's where the records get damning. The commission's deliberations explicitly referenced Vang's immigration status and the risk of deportation as a factor in the clemency decision, according to documents obtained by LifeZette. The pardon wasn't just about forgiveness or rehabilitation. It was about shielding a convicted child abuser from the immigration consequences of his conviction.

Ramsey County Assistant Attorney Tami McConkey's filing laid bare the problem with Vang's supposed remorse. She wrote that "while Mr. Vang expresses shame and regret about what his children experience when they learn of the offense, he does not share any thoughts or insight about what the victim must have gone through." His pardon application said he carried "deep shame and regret for the harm I caused" — but McConkey's assessment suggests the shame was about his reputation, not his victim.

Ramsey County District Court Judge Sara Grewing had originally handled the case. The sentence — 8 months of actual incarceration for years of child sexual abuse — already represented a system that treated the crime as something less than what it was.

The pardon board's defenders might argue this was about a father staying with his six children, that his wife supported the application, that he'd completed probation without incident. Those are real considerations in normal clemency cases.

But this wasn't a normal clemency case. The commission's own records show immigration consequences were part of the calculation. When you factor deportation risk into a pardon decision for a child sex offender, you've made a choice about whose safety matters more — and it's not the child's.

Homeland Security Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis has not commented on the specifics, but ICE eventually detained Vang in December regardless of the pardon. He was deported. The pardon board's effort to keep him in the country failed.

So the timeline reads like this: a man sexually abuses a 10-year-old for two years, serves 8 months, gets discharged from probation, applies for a pardon, and the governor's board grants it with deportation concerns on the record. Then ICE deports him anyway.

Three elected or appointed officials — Walz, Ellison, and Hudson — put their signatures on a pardon for a man who told investigators that sex with a 12-year-old was cultural. The records don't leave much room for interpretation. Neither does the $10 he gave his victim to buy her silence.