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Secretary Rubio Announces the Termination of a Foreign Child Predator's Legal Status, Jul. 10, 2026

July 10, 2026 · U.S. Department of State · 0:01:06

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced, in a State Department video published on July 10, 2026, that he had revoked the legal status of Tou Lue Vang, a Laotian national convicted in Minnesota of repeatedly sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl — a crime for which, as Rubio stated it, Vang had tried to pay his victim for her silence. Just days before Vang was scheduled to be deported, Rubio said, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz issued him a pardon, “setting him free to once again endanger the children of America,” in the Secretary’s words.

“This week I revoked his legal status in the United States,” Rubio said, “and as a result, federal agents took him into custody and as of today, he has been removed from the United States.” The department’s published description states the same outcome: Vang “has now been removed from our country and will never pose a threat to any American ever again.” Rubio closed with the administration’s framing: “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.”

Why it matters

The case is the State Department’s own authorities used as the enforcement lever: where a gubernatorial pardon interrupted a deportation, the Secretary terminated the man’s legal status himself and announced the removal personally — a federalism flashpoint between a governor’s pardon power and the administration’s removal machinery, argued by the Secretary in his own voice.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the removal of Tou Lue Vang as announced by the Secretary on July 10, 2026, following his termination of Vang’s legal status. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: U.S. Department of State, “Secretary Rubio Announces Termination of Legal Status of Foreign Child Predator” (official upload, embedded above). Statement as delivered; transcript reviewed in the site’s private research store.