Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that the U.S. revoked the legal status of a Hmong man who was recently pardoned by Minnesota officials and deported him from the country.

The removal of Tou Lue Vang of St. Paul comes one month after the Minnesota Board of Pardons granted him clemency as he faced deportation to Laos for raping a 10-year-old girl more than two decades ago.

The pardons board — which consists of Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson — voted to purge Vang’s felony sexual assault conviction after receiving a letter from his victim saying she forgave him and supported his pardon.

“Because of our actions, this foreign criminal will never pose a threat to any American ever again,” Rubio said in a video message Friday morning. “Americans must never be forced by their elected leaders to live alongside foreign sex criminals who have no right to begin with to reside in our country.”

Walz’s office declined to comment on the news of Vang’s deportation. A spokesperson for Ellison also declined to comment.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security suggested earlier this month that the state pardon could thwart Vang’s removal from the country. But Ellison’s office said the pardon only removed the underlying reason for Vang’s deportation proceedings at the time.

Vang was 18 when he started assaulting his victim in 2002. He received a removal order in 2006, the year of his conviction. But because Laos had no repatriation agreement with the United States, Vang remained in the country for nearly two decades, marrying and raising six children.

Vang completed treatment after his conviction and never reoffended, his lawyer told the pardon board in June. Vang, now 42, also addressed the board before its vote and expressed remorse for his actions.

His victim wrote in a letter to the board that she believed he had changed and wanted him to remain in the country with his family: “I believe that he has learned and grown since the abuse and that the family has suffered enough.”

But the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Vang, opposed his pardon.

“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,” wrote Tami McConkey, director of the office’s Victim, Witness and Postconviction Justice Division.

McConkey also wrote that Vang received a lighter sentence of 30 years’ probation for his offense because the victim “was experiencing pressure from her family to not cooperate.”

The Vang pardon gave Republicans a potent new example to fuel their argument that Democrats are too soft on crime and immigration enforcement.

Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, said “nobody who commits horrific abuses against children will be pardoned” if she is elected governor in November.

The DFL-endorsed candidate for governor, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, also weighed in on the case.

“I would want to look at the entire record before making a decision on any pardon case, but as a former prosecutor I have not supported pardons of sex offenders,” Klobuchar said in a statement.

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Susan Du of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this report.

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