Minnesota State Legislator Discusses Shocking Family Revelation
In a moment that stunned many of her colleagues and sent shockwaves through Minnesota politics, State Representative Kaohly Vang Her stood on the House floor Monday and delivered a speech that was anything but routine.
While advocating for a bill that would extend state-funded healthcare to illegal immigrants, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party member made a deeply personal—and politically explosive—revelation: she and her family, she claimed, are in the United States illegally.
The story began with a reflection on her family’s flight from Laos, one she thought she understood. Vang Her recalled believing for much of her life that her family's relocation to the U.S. was due to her grandfather's role as a colonel in the CIA-linked “Secret War.” But what she learned more recently, she said, painted a different picture—one that revealed her father had defrauded the U.S. immigration system to get their family into the country.
Her father, she explained, had been tasked with processing refugee paperwork at the U.S. Consulate because of his English skills and typing speed. After missing multiple opportunities to immigrate, he allegedly falsified documentation by listing Vang Her’s grandmother as his own mother, thereby forging the familial link needed to attach their family to someone with legal eligibility through USAID. “So I am illegal in this country, my parents are illegal here,” Vang Her admitted, with stark clarity.
Minnesota State Representative appears to confirm that she’s an illegal immigrant. cc: @ICEgov pic.twitter.com/ab5yvuGpi4
— Mitchell Williamson (@MWilliamsonMN) June 9, 2025
The statement was intended to humanize the undocumented and reframe the debate around immigration policy. “Think about those people — think about me,” she urged. “My family broke the law to come here. You're thinking about me.”
Her comments, however, are already drawing intense scrutiny, with critics questioning not just the morality but the legality of a sitting state lawmaker publicly admitting to illegal status. Immigration attorneys are examining whether the admission could trigger federal investigation, though any potential enforcement would be deeply entangled in legal nuances, including statutes of limitation and protections surrounding refugee resettlement from decades past.
Vang Her also appeared to preemptively counter one of the more common arguments against immigration leniency: that illegal entrants shop for states with the best public benefits. “Never one time did my family say, ‘Let’s look at which state has the greatest welfare…’” she asserted. Instead, the story she told was one of desperation, family ties, and a single forged document that changed the trajectory of their lives.
Her campaign website describes her as a Laos-born refugee who arrived in Wisconsin at age four, but Monday’s testimony sheds new light—and possible legal and political consequences—on the specifics of that journey.