Jury selection is complete and a federal trial gets underway Monday for Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan. She is accused of helping a man try to evade arrest by immigration authorities at the county courthouse last April.
A grand jury indicted Dugan the following month. She faces one count of obstructing a proceeding, a felony, and one count of concealing an individual to prevent an arrest, a misdemeanor. She has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, she could face up to six years in prison.
Prosecutors say ICE agents sought to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a Mexican national determined to be in the U.S. unlawfully, while he was appearing before Dugan on misdemeanor domestic assault charges on April 18. According to the criminal complaint, prosecutors allege Dugan falsely told agents they needed a judicial warrant, directed them to leave the hallway and go to the chief judge’s office, and addressed Flores-Ruiz’s case off the record while the agents were in the chief judge’s office. Prosecutors say she directed Flores-Ruiz and his counsel to leave the courtroom through a non-public jury door and told the attorney the defendant could appear by Zoom at his next date.
The court papers allege Flores-Ruiz and his attorney ultimately ended up in the public hallway, where ICE agents saw them. Agents chased Flores-Ruiz outside, caught and arrested him; he has since been deported.
NPR reached out to Dugan and her attorneys, who declined to comment. Before her arraignment, members of her defense team said, “As she said after her unnecessary arrest, Judge Dugan asserts her innocence and looks forward to being vindicated in court.”
Dugan’s lawyers say courthouse policy on immigration enforcement was in flux and that she was following draft protocols from the chief judge that required referring ICE agents to a supervisor. Tony Cotton, a Wisconsin criminal defense attorney not involved in the case, said if Dugan was explaining a different protocol and trying to reduce confrontation rather than obstruct police, that would affect whether she intended to impede an arrest.
Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and law professor at Loyola University, said the case will hinge on the judge’s intent — whether she tried to conceal someone or merely tried to run her courtroom and avoid Department of Homeland Security interference.
The prosecution comes amid an unprecedented political context. Levenson noted that until recent years, courthouses were largely treated as off-limits to federal arrests to avoid discouraging people from attending proceedings. With heightened immigration enforcement in the Trump administration, that understanding has eroded, she said.
Top officials in the Trump administration and President Trump have publicly supported the prosecution. The Department of Homeland Security called Dugan an “activist judge” on X.
Dugan has retained prominent defense lawyers, including former Republican solicitor general Paul Clement, suggesting her team may be preparing for appeals. Observers say her legal team includes major federal defense litigators in Wisconsin.
This is not the first time a judge has faced federal scrutiny in similar circumstances. In 2018, a Massachusetts judge was charged over allegedly allowing someone to leave a courthouse through a back door to evade ICE. The Biden Justice Department later dropped felony charges in that case and referred the judge to a judicial conduct commission.
