Minnesota Governor Tim Walz — the man who faked his military rank and almost became Vice President — just issued a pardon to an illegal alien convicted of aiding and abetting armed robbery, for the sole purpose of blocking ICE from deporting him. The pardon was approved unanimously by Minnesota's three-member Board of Pardons Clemency Review Commission, which includes Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and State Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson.
From stolen valor to stolen pardons. The man's range is truly something.
The recipient of Walz's executive generosity is Jai Vang, who was convicted of the armed robbery charge back in 1994 when he was eighteen years old. Walz praised Vang as a "taxpaying citizen" who is "creating job growth" and declared, "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." The country in question is Laos.
Let that sink in. The governor of Minnesota just argued that deporting a convicted armed robber would somehow make the state less safe. That's the kind of logic that makes your brain hurt if you think about it for more than three seconds.
Vang was arrested during Operation Metro Surge, a federal enforcement operation targeting violent criminal aliens in the Minneapolis area. ICE came for him because his criminal record triggered mandatory removal proceedings — which is exactly how the system is supposed to work. Walz's pardon was designed to erase that criminal record and pull the legal rug out from under the deportation.
Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons wasn't about to let this slide. He called on Walz to stop his inflammatory rhetoric, noting that the governor is "free to advocate that Congress change them" — meaning the immigration laws — but that using executive clemency as a deportation shield is a different animal entirely.
And about that rhetoric: Walz has referred to ICE agents as "modern-day Gestapo." Let that one land. The governor of an American state compared federal law enforcement officers to Nazi secret police because they're enforcing immigration laws passed by Congress. This is the man the Democratic Party thought should be one heartbeat from the presidency.
Here's the kicker that Walz and his allies don't want you to know: under federal law, a state pardon doesn't actually alter someone's immigration status. The feds can still proceed with deportation regardless of what Walz scribbles on a piece of paper. So this whole exercise might end up being nothing more than a political stunt — a very expensive, very public middle finger to federal immigration enforcement.
But that's the point, isn't it? Walz doesn't care whether the pardon actually works. He cares about the headline. He cares about positioning himself as the guy who stood up to the big bad federal government on behalf of a convicted armed robber. That's his brand now.
The man who lied about carrying weapons in war is now protecting people who actually used them in crimes. You can't make this stuff up.
As reported by LifeZette, this is the latest escalation in what has become an all-out war between blue state governors and federal immigration enforcement. And Tim Walz just made himself the poster boy for the losing side.