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 terms. 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 with extreme prejudice from the face of the earth.