On April 25, the FBI apprehended Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan and charged her with providing shelter to a defendant, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, in order to evade arrest by immigration authorities.
According to court documents, prosecutors contend that her attempt to dismiss the charges contravenes “well-established law that has long permitted judges to be prosecuted for crimes they commit.”
The government’s filing also challenges Dugan’s assertion that federal agents disrupted ongoing proceedings in her courtroom on April 18 when they arrived to arrest Flores-Ruiz for alleged immigration violations, arguing that it was Dugan “who took it upon herself to interfere with the federal agents’ performance of their responsibilities,” as stated in the filing.
Richard Frohling, the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, wrote that her position as a state judge does not grant her the right to engage in actions that violate federal criminal law.
Prosecutors claim that “Dugan chose to pause an unrelated case, leave her courtroom, disrupt proceedings in a colleague’s courtroom to commandeer her assistance, and then confront agents in the public hallway.”
The filing further alleges that Dugan guided agents through a set of double doors to the chief judge’s office, despite being aware that the chief judge was not present.
“Dugan quickly returned to her courtroom and, among other things, instructed E.F.R.’s attorney to ‘take your client out and come back and get a date’ and then to go through the jury door and ‘down the stairs’ before physically escorting E.F.R. and his attorney into a non-public hallway with access to a stairwell that led to a courthouse exit,” the filing states, referring to Flores-Ruiz by his initials.
“She did this all just days after expressing gratitude to a colleague for providing information that clarified ICE could lawfully make arrests in her courtroom.
ABC News acquired footage from over two dozen surveillance cameras located at the Milwaukee County Circuit Court via a public records request, which shows that the individual and his attorney did not use the stairs after their meeting with the judge, but rather exited through a private door that led to a public hallway.
Federal authorities tracked the undocumented immigrant and his lawyer as they descended in the elevator to the main level of the court, as recorded in the video.
Flores-Ruiz, who was set to appear before Dugan that day on a battery charge, was arrested outside the courthouse following a brief chase on foot.
“In simple terms, nothing in the indictment or the expected evidence at trial supports Dugan’s claim that agents ‘disrupted’ the court’s schedule; rather, all incidents stemmed from Dugan’s unilateral, non-judicial, and unofficial actions in obstructing a federal immigration issue over which she, as a Wisconsin state judge, had no jurisdiction,” prosecutors stated in the filing.
In the document, the prosecution contends that even if judicial immunity were applicable in this situation, it would “not assist Dugan” because her actions “exceeded her official capacity when she attempted to prevent federal law enforcement officials from carrying out a legitimate arrest…in a public space of the Milwaukee County Courthouse.”
Dugan has entered a plea of not guilty to the charges, and the trial is set for July 21.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court issued an administrative order in late April instructing Judge Dugan to be “temporarily relieved of her official responsibilities.”
The order states that Dugan “is temporarily barred from exercising the powers of a circuit court judge in the State of Wisconsin.”
