The United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, announced this Friday that the deportation proceedings of a citizen of Laos convicted of abusing a minor in Minnesota are being resumed, despite the fact that the state's governor, the Democrat Tim Walz, a usual target of President Donald Trump's harsh criticism, had opted to grant him an emergency pardon.
Visibly annoyed, Rubio used social media to sharply condemn Walz's actions and immediately invalidate Tue Lue Vang's status. The governor, meanwhile, has made similar decisions in other cases of irregular migrants and defended in this specific case that the victim herself had expressed her opposition to deportation (the aggressor maintained that relations with minors were a "cultural" matter).
"Vang has been expelled from our country and will never again pose a threat to any American," Rubio stated. "Americans should never have to live with the fear that foreign sexual predators, protected from deportation by their own elected officials, can endanger them or their children," he added.
Minnesota has been under the scrutiny of the Trump Administration for years, including during his first term, as the White House considers it a hotbed of crime and fraud associated with irregular immigration. State authorities, on the other hand, maintain that foreign-born communities, which make up approximately 10% of the total population, are a key element for social and economic progress.
This political and social confrontation intensified at the beginning of the year with the deployment of federal agents to the territory to carry out a wide-ranging raid operation that ended in tragedy: the officials were implicated in the shooting deaths of two American citizens, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, in interventions denounced by several NGOs as extrajudicial killings.