Walz pardons illegal immigrant convicted of armed robbery, blocks ICE deportation to Laos

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz convened a special session of the state Board of Pardons to pardon Jai Vang, an illegal immigrant convicted of armed robbery, just days before federal authorities were set to deport him to Laos. The unanimous vote on May 27 effectively shielded Vang from removal after ICE agents had arrested him months earlier during Operation Metro Surge in the Minneapolis area.

The pardon caps a bitter standoff between Walz and federal immigration enforcement, one in which the governor has compared ICE agents to Nazis and called them a “modern-day Gestapo.” It also raises hard questions about whether a state clemency board can override a federal deportation order simply by wiping a criminal record clean.

A 1994 armed robbery conviction and decades without deportation

Vang was convicted of aiding and abetting and armed robbery in Hennepin County in 1994, when he was 18 years old. He served his prison term and was released back into the United States. For more than three decades after that conviction, Vang remained in the country, building a family, starting a local painting business, and, by all available accounts, staying out of further legal trouble.

That changed in January 2026, when ICE arrested Vang as part of Operation Metro Surge, a federal enforcement sweep in the Minneapolis area. Deportation to Laos was scheduled for June.

Vang requested clemency. Walz responded by calling a special session of the Board of Pardons’ Clemency Review Commission, a body that includes the governor, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Minnesota Chief Supreme Court Justice Natalie Hudson. The commission voted unanimously to pardon Vang, with Walz offering a detailed justification on the record.

“I can find no reason how Minnesota will be safer or better if Mr. Vang is deported to a country he has not been to since he was a child. I do not see how it would serve his family, nor the economic interest where we have a taxpaying citizen who is creating job growth and living a life free from any criminal activity.”

Note the word “citizen.” Vang is not a citizen. He is, by the federal government’s determination, an illegal immigrant subject to a deportation order. Whether Walz’s use of the term was a slip or a deliberate rhetorical choice, the record does not clarify.

Ellison and Hudson fall in line

Attorney General Ellison joined the hearing by phone, reviewed Vang’s file, and agreed with the board’s reasoning in support of clemency. Chief Justice Hudson also participated and voted to pardon. The decision was unanimous, no dissent, no recorded reservations.

The reasoning offered by the commission centered on Vang’s post-conviction life: no further crimes, a family, a business. Those are real facts. But they do not change Vang’s immigration status, and they do not erase the armed robbery conviction from the record of what actually happened in Hennepin County in 1994.

What the pardon does, or may do, is strip away the qualifying conviction that made Vang deportable under federal law. That is the mechanism, and it is the same one the Department of Homeland Security has flagged in a separate Minnesota case. DHS blasted the Minnesota Board of Pardons for unanimously pardoning another illegal immigrant from Laos, Xayasounethone Chandee, who had been convicted of assault in 1992 and aggravated assault with a weapon in 2008. An immigration judge had issued Chandee a final removal order in 1995, but he was never deported. DHS acting assistant secretary Lauren Bis called that pardon “absolute INSANITY,” saying Minnesota’s “sanctuary politicians’ pardon took away this violent thug’s qualifying convictions that made him removable from the U.S.”

The pattern is plain. The state board pardons. The qualifying conviction disappears. The federal deportation order loses its legal footing. Whether this maneuver survives a federal legal challenge remains an open question, but the intent is not subtle.

Walz’s war of words with ICE

The Vang pardon did not happen in a vacuum. Walz has waged a sustained campaign against federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota. During Operation Metro Surge, he fought the federal government at every turn. He compared ICE agents to Nazis. He called them a “modern-day Gestapo.” He urged ICE to “get out” of Minnesota.

Then-Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons responded with a sharp rebuke:

“If the governor doesn’t like the laws, he’s free to advocate that Congress change them, but he should refrain from putting ICE officers in danger by likening them to one of the most appalling groups in history.”

That warning deserves more attention than it has received. ICE agents carry out federal law. Comparing them to the Gestapo does not just insult them, it paints a target. Walz, a former vice presidential nominee and sitting governor, has the megaphone to do real damage with that kind of rhetoric. Lyons was right to call it out.

Walz’s record of ducking accountability in Minnesota is not new. He skipped a fraud hearing while inside the Capitol, according to a Republican lawmaker, a pattern of selective engagement that raises questions about what the governor considers worthy of his time and attention.

What the pardon does not answer

Several questions remain unresolved. Does a Minnesota state pardon automatically block a federal deportation? The legal mechanics are murky, and the source material does not settle the issue. Has DHS or the Department of Justice challenged the Vang pardon in court? That, too, is unclear.

What about the victim of the 1994 armed robbery? The record is silent. No name, no description of the crime’s circumstances, no indication of whether anyone was injured. The clemency board focused on what Vang did after prison. The person he robbed at gunpoint, or helped rob at gunpoint, does not appear in the discussion.

Minnesota has seen its share of high-profile criminal justice cases in recent years. The Feeding Our Future fraud case resulted in a 41.5-year sentence for the ringleader of a $250 million pandemic fraud scheme. That case showed what happens when the system works, when accountability is pursued rather than erased.

The Vang pardon shows the opposite impulse. A governor who disagrees with federal immigration law used a state clemency mechanism to nullify the practical effect of a deportation order. He did so for a man convicted of a violent felony, one who has lived in the country illegally for decades. And he did so while calling the federal agents enforcing that law the modern equivalent of Adolf Hitler’s secret police.

A broader pattern of Democratic defiance

Walz is not the only Democratic officeholder whose conduct under scrutiny reveals a gap between stated principles and actual behavior. Virginia Democrat L. Louise Lucas now faces an FBI corruption probe after years of taunting others over federal investigations, a reminder that political posturing does not confer immunity.

The Vang case fits a familiar template. A progressive governor decides which federal laws deserve enforcement and which do not. A clemency board stacked with political allies rubber-stamps the decision. The federal government objects but has limited immediate recourse. And the public is left to wonder whether the rule of law still means anything when the people sworn to uphold it treat it as optional.

There is a reasonable debate to be had about immigration policy, about proportionality, about what to do with people who committed crimes decades ago and have lived quietly since. That debate belongs in Congress, as Todd Lyons correctly noted. It does not belong in a governor’s office, weaponized through a clemency board to override federal authority.

Legal outcomes that hinge on political convenience rather than law tend to erode public trust quickly. A Tennessee man jailed 37 days over Facebook memes collected an $835,000 settlement after the system acknowledged it had gone too far. When the system gets it wrong, someone eventually pays. The question in Minnesota is who that will be.

The real cost

Walz framed the pardon as an act of compassion and economic common sense. Vang has a family. He runs a business. He pays taxes. Those facts matter. But they do not change the law, and they do not give a governor the authority to decide, case by case, which illegal immigrants get to stay and which do not.

If a state pardon can erase the criminal record that triggers deportation, then every sanctuary-minded governor in the country now has a playbook. Pardon the conviction. Remove the legal basis for removal. Dare the federal government to stop you. That is not compassion. It is nullification dressed up in clemency robes.

The people who pay for that approach are the ones who always do, the taxpayers who fund the system, the legal immigrants who followed the rules, and the ICE agents who risk their safety enforcing laws that their own government’s elected officials call them Nazis for carrying out.