A Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge is facing federal criminal charges after she allegedly attempted to help a man avoid arrest by immigration agents at the Milwaukee County Courthouse last week.
Judge Hannah Dugan was charged Friday with obstruction and with concealing an individual. She appeared in federal court Friday morning after being arrested at the Milwaukee County Courthouse at 8:30 a.m. She is accused of helping a man sought by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement evade arrest after a scheduled criminal hearing in her courtroom last week.
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Dugan issued a statement through an attorney Friday afternoon saying she “has committed herself to the rule of law and the principles of due process for her entire career as a lawyer and a judge.”
“Judge Dugan will defend herself vigorously, and looks forward to being exonerated,” according to the statement.
According to a federal criminal complaint, agents with ICE, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration went to the Milwaukee courthouse on April 18 to serve an administrative arrest warrant on Eduardo Flores-Ruiz. Flores-Ruiz was in Dugan’s courtroom facing charges of misdemeanor battery.
An FBI agent from Milwaukee’s field office said Dugan became “visibly angry” after being told immigration officials were there to arrest Flores-Ruiz. The agent said the situation was “absurd.”
The complaint claims Flores-Ruiz was “seated in the jury box” rather than the courtroom’s gallery. A courtroom deputy said they heard Dugan “say something like, ‘Wait, come with me’” to Flores-Ruiz and his attorney as they were walking toward a public exit from the courtroom.
Once Flores-Ruiz left the courthouse, a foot chase ensued and federal agents arrested him at a nearby intersection.
On Friday morning, FBI Director Kash Patel posted on social media that Dugan was arrested on “charges of obstruction – after evidence of Judge Dugan obstructing an immigration arrest operation last week.”
“We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, allowing the subject – an illegal alien – to evade arrest,” he wrote.
Patel said agents “chased down the perp on foot” and Dugan’s “obstruction created increased danger to the public.”
Patel’s post was deleted shortly after being posted, only to reappear hours later.
The FBI didn’t immediately respond to requests for confirmation of or comment on the arrest.
Dugan was elected as Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge in April 2016. She graduated with a law degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1987 and spent nearly 20 years working as a litigator with an emphasis on housing, public benefits, civil rights and domestic abuse with Legal Action of Wisconsin and the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee.
Dugan worked as a private practice as a civil rights attorney from 2010 until her election as judge.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service told WPR the FBI arrested Dugan at 8:30 a.m. at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed the arrest in a social media post just after 11 a.m.
“No one is above the law,” Bondi said.
Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said federal authorities’ decision to arrest Dugan in the courthouse rather than schedule a court appearance was “overly dramatic” and calculated for effect.
“They’re just trying to have this show of force, and in the process of doing this in the courthouse where people have to go for court proceedings, they’re scaring people away from participating in the process,” Johnson said.
Milwaukee County officials recently worked to create a plan for handling ICE agents at the courthouse because of fear that immigration arrests would prevent people from seeking needed court services.
But state Rep. Bob Donovan, R-Greenfield, a former Milwaukee alder, said Dugan created the drama.
“I guess it’s never a good thing when you have to arrest a judge,” Donovan said. “Having said that, in my opinion, certainly Judge Dugan has no one to blame but herself if in fact these accusations are correct, her irresponsible behavior created this mess to begin with.”
Dugan arrest an ‘escalation’ of 2018 charges against Massachusetts Judge
The federal charges against Judge Dugan are similar to charges filed against a Massachusetts judge by President Donald Trump’s administration in 2018, but there’s a notable difference.
Douglas Keith is a senior counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. He told WPR that Judge Shelly M. Richmond Joseph was charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice, but through an indictment, which meant the judge was not arrested and could instead voluntarily appear before a federal court. Those charges were dropped in 2022, though she faces an ongoing ethics complaint from the incident.
“So, this (Dugan’s arrest) is certainly an escalation from anything we’ve seen before, even from things the prior (Trump) administration did,” Keith said.
A statement from the Brennan Center, a progressive legal and public policy organization, said, “arresting a judge for something like this is dangerous and wrong.”
Keith said during both Trump administrations, there’s been an increase of immigration arrests taking place “in criminal courts, in family courts, in diversion courts for survivors of human trafficking.”
“It creates this cloud of fear over the courthouse, and we saw already in 2017 and 2018 how it leads to fewer people accessing courts, even when they need those courts to protect themselves,” Keith said.
UW Law School professor Adam Stevenson said it is “interesting” the government chose to arrest Dugan. Generally, Stevenson said, arrests are made when there are concerns about public safety or a defendant being a potential flight risk.
“Judge Dugan, I think it’s fairly safe to say, is not known as a violent individual or a risk to public safety,” Stevenson said. “And, as far as has been reported, there’s no information that Judge Dugan was looking to leave the jurisdiction either somewhere else in the country or out of the country.”
Dugan’s next court appearance is May 15 at 9 a.m., according to the U.S. District Court Eastern District of Wisconsin’s clerk office.
Editor’s note: WPR’s Nick Rommel, Deneen Smith and Corrinne Hess contributed to this report.
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