By Charles C. W. Cooke
Friday, July 17, 2026
The Trump administration has deported a Laotian national
who had been convicted of raping a 10-year-old. Responding to this news, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, who
had for some reason pardoned the man, asked the following questions:
“Did that make us
any safer?” Walz said Tuesday, according to KTTC. “Did that make the children
that are left behind any more stable?
“Did it improve
the idea that we can’t all be judged by our worst day?”
What? What?
What?
Has it “made us any safer” that a man who was convicted
of sexually abusing a child has been removed from the United
States? Yes, quite obviously it has. About one in four men who have been convicted of sexual abuse
against children go on to commit another offense within 15 years. By deporting
this man, the Trump administration has reduced his chance of reoffending in the
United States to zero.
As for Walz’s second question:
“Did it improve
the idea that we can’t all be judged by our worst day?”
Again: what? I don’t even know where to start with
that. Who is “our”? Nobody I know has done anything of the sort. And, yes, it
is absolutely acceptable to judge someone who raped a ten-year-old for raping a
ten-year-old. There are no possible circumstances in which one is obliged to
“who amongst us?” the rape of a ten-year-old — especially when, like Tim
Walz, one has been elected to enforce the law. Nor, by the same token, is there
anything wrong with our immigration services kicking people out based on their
“worst day.” Americans get to have “worst days” and stay in their own country —
even if staying involves a prison term. Foreign nationals do not.
Tim Walz seems to believe that the man who did this has
been treated badly. I, by contrast, think that the man who did this ought to
count himself lucky that he wasn’t taken out to a gallows within 24 hours of
his conviction and dispatched from the face of the earth.
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