Wisconsin judge arrested by FBI, charged with obstructing immigrant arrest
Federal prosecutors have charged a Milwaukee judge with obstructing an immigration arrest operation—a significant escalation of Justice Department efforts to prosecute local officials for allegedly interfering with immigration enforcement.
FBI Director Kash Patel announced the arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan in a post on the social media platform X. Patel accused Dugan of “intentionally misdirecting” federal agents who arrived at the courthouse to detain an immigrant who was set to appear before her last Friday in an unrelated proceeding.
In court filings Friday, the government said the judge sent the agents away from that hearing and then escorted the man and his lawyer out of her courtroom through a private exit.
“Thankfully, our agents chased down the perp on foot and he’s been in custody since,” Patel wrote. “But the Judge’s obstruction created increased danger to the public.”
Dugan is charged with felony counts of obstruction and concealing a person from arrest, the most serious of which is punishable by up to five years in prison.
“Ms. Dugan wholeheartedly regrets and protests her arrest,” her attorney, Craig Mastantuono, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen C. Dries during a brief appearance Friday in federal court in Milwaukee. “It was not made in the interest of public safety, and we ask that the court allow her release.” Mastantuono declined to comment after the proceeding.
Since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Justice Department officials have directed federal prosecutors nationwide to investigate and potentially charge state and local officials who impede the president’s immigration crackdown. The Trump administration has also openly clashed with state and federal judges who have sought to restrain some of the government’s most aggressive deportation and enforcement efforts.
Remarking on the case against Dugan, Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a social media post Friday: “No one is above the law.”
In a court affidavit supporting the judge’s arrest, a Milwaukee-based FBI agent said he interviewed multiple witnesses who described Dugan as “visibly angry” when she learned April 18 that federal agents were waiting outside her courtroom to arrest Eduardo Flores Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican national set to appear before her on a misdemeanor state battery charges.
Dugan allegedly confronted the agents in the hallway, according to the affidavit. When they told her they had an administrative warrant to detain Flores Ruiz, she instructed them to speak to the court’s chief judge.
While the agents were away, the affidavit states, Dugan quietly postponed Flores Ruiz’s hearing and directed him and his lawyer to leave through a private jury room exit instead of the public entryway.
The agents later spotted Flores Ruiz outside the courthouse and detained him after a brief foot chase, Patel said in his social media post.
“We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject … allowing the subject—an illegal alien—to evade arrest,” the FBI director wrote.
ICE’s use of local courthouses as a venue to locate and detain migrants has drawn criticism from judges in some jurisdictions, who say the practice makes it more difficult to ensure undocumented immigrants will show up for court proceedings in which they are victims, defendants or witnesses.
Immigration authorities say courthouses provide a unique setting where they can be certain their targets are scheduled to show up at a specific time and date and will have already undergone security screening.
Milwaukee’s ICE office, which has made other arrests at Dugan’s courthouse this year, has adopted a policy to only detain undocumented immigrants due in court for alleged crimes and not to pursue those who may be in court as witnesses or victims, according to the affidavit filed in Dugan’s case.
During Trump’s first term, the Justice Department charged a judge and court officer in Massachusetts with helping an undocumented immigrant escape from a courthouse in Newton, a suburb of Boston, in 2018.
Prosecutors said then that as ICE agents arrived to detain the man, Judge Shelley M. Richmond Joseph directed him to leave through the courthouse basement, where he was let out a back door as the agents waited for him in the lobby.
The federal charges were dropped in 2022 as part of an agreement that required Joseph to refer herself to the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct, the body in charge of judicial discipline in the state.
Within days of Trump’s return to the White House in January, a top Justice Department official directed federal prosecutors nationwide to investigate and potentially charge state and local officials who impede the president’s immigration enforcement agenda.
“Federal law prohibits state and local actors from resisting, obstructing, and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration-related commands,” wrote Emil Bove, then acting deputy attorney general.
Dugan won her seat on the Milwaukee County bench in 2016, defeating a judge who had been appointed in the heavily Democratic county by then-Gov. Scott Walker (R).
Before she was a judge, Dugan worked as a poverty attorney and executive director of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.
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