Protesters gather outside of the Milwaukee FBI office to speak out against the arrest of Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Prosecutors for the Trump administration filed a brief Monday requesting that a federal judge not dismiss the government’s indictment against Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan.
Dugan faces criminal charges after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, along with agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency and FBI, arrived in the Milwaukee County Courthouse April 18 to arrest 31-year-old Eduardo Flores-Ruiz for being in the country illegally.
Flores-Ruiz was set to appear in Dugan’s courtroom that day for a status hearing on misdemeanor charges against him. When Dugan learned that the agents were outside her courtroom, she confronted them and learned they only had an administrative warrant, which was issued by an agency official and not a judge. An administrative warrant doesn’t allow agents to enter private spaces in the courthouse such as Dugan’s courtroom.
Later, while the agents were waiting for Flores-Ruiz in the hallway outside the main courtroom door, Dugan sent him and his attorney out a side door into the hallway. One of the agents rode down the elevator with Flores-Ruiz and he was later arrested on the street.
Dugan was charged with concealing an individual to prevent arrest, a misdemeanor, and obstruction, which is a felony. Last month, Dugan’s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the case against her, arguing she was acting in her official capacity as a judge and therefore immune from prosecution for her actions and that the federal government is impinging on the state of Wisconsin’s authority to operate its court system.
The case drew national attention, with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and FBI Director Kash Patel both making public statements about Dugan’s arrest before she’d even been indicted. Legal experts have questioned the strength of the federal government’s case and accused Trump officials of grandstanding to make a political point.
In the Monday filing, federal prosecutors argued that dismissing the case would ignore previously established law that allows judges to face criminal charges.
“Such a ruling would give state court judges carte blanche to interfere with valid law enforcement actions by federal agents in public hallways of a courthouse, and perhaps even beyond,” the prosecutors argued. “Dugan’s desired ruling would, in essence, say that judges are ‘above the law,’ and uniquely entitled to interfere with federal law enforcement.”
Protesters gather to support Judge Hannah Dugan. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Judge Hannah Dugan appeared at her arraignment Thursday in Milwaukee’s federal court and pleaded not guilty to charges that she helped a man elude federal agents in the Milwaukee County courthouse earlier this year.
Dugan was arrested in April and was indicted Tuesday by a grand jury on two counts, concealing a person from arrest and obstruction of proceedings. The charges could carry penalties of six years of prison, years of supervision, and at least $350,000 in fines.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
Dugan appeared with three attorneys, and did not comment to reporters after the hearing was over. Attorneys mentioned in court that a small number of video excerpts have been shared with the defense, but discovery is still ongoing.
Judge Lynn Adelman has been assigned to preside over Dugan’s jury trial, which was set to start on July 21, with a pretrial hearing July 9. Jury selection is expected to be lengthy and complicated. A motions hearing was set in Judge Nancy Joseph’s court on May 30.
Dugan is accused of escorting a man into a public hallway with access to elevators after federal agents arrived outside her courtroom, where the man, a Mexican immigrant, was having a routine hearing in a misdemeanor battery case.
The agents had an administrative warrant for his arrest, which was not signed by a judge and did not give agents the authority to enter the courtroom. While the agents waited in the hallway outside, Dugan directed the man and his attorney out a side door that exited into the same hallway. The agents saw him leave the room and one rode down the elevator with him before he was arrested later on the street.
Outside the Milwaukee federal courthouse on Thursday, a crowd of about 200 people gathered, including elected officials, activists and local residents showed up early in the morning to support the circuit court judge. Speakers led chants through a microphone on the courthouse steps.
One person at the rally, Erik Fanning, said that the charges against Dugan feel “preposterous,” and argued that a judge would be knowledgeable about what the law would and would not allow her to do in courtroom situations.
Protesters gather to support Judge Hannah Dugan. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
“As many people in this country have found out, the law can be manipulated in order to serve an interest that’s sometimes more powerful than the law, as we’re seeing right now in this country,” Fanning told Wisconsin Examiner. “And so that’s the fear here with me.”
After her arrest, Dugan was suspended by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and protests erupted in Milwaukee County calling for the charges against her to be dropped.
If the case against Dugan succeeds, “That’s a powerful statement,” Fanning said. “That’s a powerful move in this game that they’re playing with our justice system.”
Shortly after Dugan’s arrest, FBI Director Kash Patel posted on social media praising her detention, then deleted the post.
For Fanning, Dugan’s arrest felt like a “made-for-TV” moment created by the Trump administration. More press attention on Dugan’s arrest and trial validates his own instincts that “this is a watershed moment,” he said.
“The media should be interested, because it’s a frightening, very important moment,” Fanning said. “Remember who this administration’s leader is. It’s a TV guy. It’s a manipulating the press, and propaganda guy…So everything they do is a TV show.”
The FBI on Friday arrested a Milwaukee judge accused of helping a man evade immigration authorities, escalating a clash between the Trump administration and local authorities over the Republican president’s sweeping immigration crackdown.
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan is accused of escorting the man and his lawyer out of her courtroom through the jury door last week after learning that immigration authorities were seeking his arrest. The man was taken into custody outside the courthouse after agents chased him on foot.
President Donald Trump’s administration has accused state and local officials of interfering with his immigration enforcement priorities. The arrest also comes amid a growing battle between the administration and the federal judiciary over the president’s executive actions over deportations and other matters.
Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, in a statement on the arrest, accused the Trump administration of repeatedly using “dangerous rhetoric to attack and attempt to undermine our judiciary at every level.”
“I have deep respect for the rule of law, our nation’s judiciary, the importance of judges making decisions impartially without fear or favor, and the efforts of law enforcement to hold people accountable if they commit a crime,” Evers said. “I will continue to put my faith in our justice system as this situation plays out in the court of law.”
Dugan was taken into custody by the FBI on Friday morning on the courthouse grounds, according to U.S. Marshals Service spokesperson Brady McCarron. She appeared briefly in federal court in Milwaukee later Friday before being released from custody. She faces charges of “concealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest” and obstructing or impeding a proceeding.
“Judge Dugan wholeheartedly regrets and protests her arrest. It was not made in the interest of public safety,” her attorney, Craig Mastantuono, said during the hearing. He declined to comment to an Associated Press reporter following her court appearance.
Court papers suggest Dugan was alerted to the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the courthouse by her clerk, who was informed by an attorney that they appeared to be in the hallway.
The FBI affidavit describes Dugan as “visibly angry” over the arrival of immigration agents in the courthouse and says that she pronounced the situation “absurd” before leaving the bench and retreating to her chambers. It says she and another judge later approached members of the arrest team inside the courthouse, displaying what witnesses described as a “confrontational, angry demeanor.”
After a back-and-forth with officers over the warrant for the man, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, she demanded that the arrest team speak with the chief judge and led them away from the courtroom, the affidavit says.
After directing the arrest team to the chief judge’s office, investigators say, Dugan returned to the courtroom and was heard saying words to the effect of “wait, come with me” before ushering Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer through a jury door into a non-public area of the courthouse. The action was unusual, the affidavit says, because “only deputies, juries, court staff, and in-custody defendants being escorted by deputies used the back jury door. Defense attorneys and defendants who were not in custody never used the jury door.”
A sign that remained posted on Dugan’s courtroom door Friday advised that if any attorney or other court official “knows or believes that a person feels unsafe coming to the courthouse to courtroom 615,” they should notify the clerk and request an appearance via Zoom.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the man was facing domestic violence charges and victims were sitting in the courtroom with state prosecutors when the judge helped him escape immigration arrest.
The judge “put the lives of our law enforcement officers at risk. She put the lives of citizens at risk. A street chase — it’s absurd that that had to happen,” Bondi said on Fox News Channel.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat who represents Wisconsin, called the arrest of a sitting judge a “gravely serious and drastic move” that “threatens to breach” the separation of power between the executive and judicial branches.
“Make no mistake, we do not have kings in this country and we are a Democracy governed by laws that everyone must abide by,” Baldwin said in an emailed statement. “By relentlessly attacking the judicial system, flouting court orders, and arresting a sitting judge, this President is putting those basic Democratic values that Wisconsinites hold dear on the line.”
The case is similar to one brought during the first Trump administration against a Massachusetts judge, who was accused of helping a man sneak out a back door of a courthouse to evade a waiting immigration enforcement agent.
That prosecution sparked outrage from many in the legal community, who slammed the case as politically motivated. Prosecutors dropped the case against Newton District Judge Shelley Joseph in 2022 under the Democratic Biden administration after she agreed to refer herself to a state agency that investigates allegations of misconduct by members of the bench.
The Justice Department had previously signaled that it was going to crack down on local officials who thwart federal immigration efforts.
The department in January ordered prosecutors to investigate for potential criminal charges any state and local officials who obstruct or impede federal functions. As potential avenues for prosecution, a memo cited a conspiracy offense as well as a law prohibiting the harboring of people in the country illegally.
Dugan was elected in 2016 to the county court Branch 31. She also has served in the court’s probate and civil divisions, according to her judicial candidate biography.
Before being elected to public office, Dugan practiced at Legal Action of Wisconsin and the Legal Aid Society. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1981 with a bachelor of arts degree and earned her Juris Doctorate in 1987 from the school.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
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