A veteran Wisconsin judge was arrested Friday on charges of helping a Mexican illegal migrant evade Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in her courtroom.
Judge Hannah Dugan, who has been on the Milwaukee County bench for nearly a decade, is accused of obstruction of justice and concealing Eduardo Flores-Ruiz from arrest following a pre-trial hearing last week.
Dugan appeared briefly in Milwaukee federal court Friday morning before being released after prosecutors said they would not ask for her detention before trial. Her arraignment has been set for May 15.
“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 proceeding.
According to a criminal complaint obtained by The Post, an ICE officer and a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official showed up outside Dugan’s courtroom April 18 with a warrant for Flores-Ruiz’s arrest for illegally entering the US, but were told by a security guard and a sheriff’s sergeant to wait outside until after the hearing.
The complaint noted that Flores-Ruiz, 30, had been deported from the US once before in 2013. It was not immediately clear when he crossed the border again, and there is no evidence he did so legally.
Flores-Ruiz was appearing before Dugan April 18 for a pre-trial conference on three misdemeanor battery charges stemming from a fight the previous month in which he was accused of punching another person 30 times after being accused of playing music too loudly, according to a police report obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The complaint states that while the team assigned to arrest Flores-Ruiz, which included FBI and DEA agents, waited for the hearing to conclude, they were photographed by a public defender, who informed Dugan’s clerk that “there appeared to be ICE agents in the hallway.”
After speaking with the clerk, Dugan “became visibly angry” and left the bench to confront the federal agents, according to an affidavit by a FBI special agent.
“Witnesses uniformly reported that Judge Dugan was visibly upset and had a confrontational, angry demeanor,” the statement read.
After initially demanding that the officers leave the building if they were not there for a court appearance, Dugan allegedly directed the federal agents away from her courtroom to Chief Judge Carl Ashley’s office after being shown the immigration warrant for Flores-Ruiz.
After Dugan had gone back inside, the complaint states, a deputy assigned to her courtroom told a member of the federal team that he had not alerted Dugan to their presence and added that the judge was “‘pushing’ Flores-Ruiz’s case through.”
After Flores-Ruiz’s appearance was completed with him watching from the jury box, the affidavit states, the deputy heard Dugan “say something like, ‘Wait, come with me’” before escorting Flores-Ruiz and his attorney out of the courtroom’s “jury door” to a non-public area of the courthouse, where the chief judge had advised the feds that they could not arrest Flores-Ruiz.
“These events were also unusual for two reasons,” the complaint states. “First, the courtroom deputy had previously heard Judge Dugan direct people not to sit in the jury box because it was exclusively for the jury’s use. Second, according to the courtroom deputy, 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.”
Later, a prosecuting attorney asked about the status of Flores-Ruiz’s battery case and was told it had been “adjourned.”
Flores-Ruiz and his attorney made it out of the courthouse before the suspect was arrested by a FBI and DEA agent following a brief foot chase.
“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,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in an X post Friday morning.
“Thankfully our agents chased down the perp on foot and he’s been in custody since, but the Judge’s obstruction created increased danger to the public.”
Patel later deleted the X post announcing Dugan’s arrest, for reasons that were not immediately clear. Attorney General Pam Bondi later reconfirmed Dugan’s arrest on social media, declaring: “No one is above the law.”
Flores Ruiz had been arrested after police were called to a Milwaukee home for a reported fight March 12. In addition to repeatedly punching a person, the police report says he struck a woman who tried to break up the altercation.
One of the reported victims initially told police that Flores Ruiz was “just a friend that was staying the night.” However, when investigators returned to the home the following day, the victims said he had actually been living there for the past year.
Flores Ruiz is now being held in ICE custody at the Dodge Detention Facility in Juneau, about 50 miles northwest of Milwaukee, records show.
Dugan’s arrest comes amid a growing feud between the Trump administration and the federal judiciary over the president’s tough immigration stance.
In an interview with the Milwaukee Independent in 2016, Dugan had stressed the need for the judiciary system to be free from political pressure.
“The judges in Milwaukee County – the 47 branches of the circuit court and the 19 municipal courts – in my experience act as independent public officials, deciding cases according to the legal process. Sometimes those cases get politicized because of the subject matter,” she said at the time.
“It is the role of the judge to be particularly cautious that such cases are handled according to the legal process and not be overwhelmed by political pressure.”
While Milwaukee hasn’t officially designated itself a “sanctuary city,” Democratic Mayor Cavalier Johnson has indicated the city would welcome migrants with open arms, telling WUWM earlier this year that he didn’t want to make such a declaration amid fears the city would be targeted by Trump.
On Friday, Johnson accused the feds of “showboating” in Dugan’s arrest.
“They’re just trying to have this show of force and in the process of doing this, in a courthouse where people need to go for court proceedings, they’re scaring people away from participating in the process,” he told reporters.
“If a judge is being arrested in a courthouse, just imagine the chilling effect that it sends to other folks who would otherwise participate in judicial proceedings.”
Dugan’s arrest cones one day after a recently retired New Mexico judge and his wife were hauled away in cuffs for allegedly sheltering a suspected Tren de Aragua gangbanger at their home.
Ex-Doña Ana County Magistrate Judge Jose “Joel” Cano and his wife, Nancy Cano, were accused of harboring Cristhian Ortega-Lopez in their guesthouse after initially hiring him as a handyman.
Dugan graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1986 and 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.
With Post wires
