Former Wisconsin judge avoids prison in ICE obstruction case

Hannah Dugan’s condemnation comes aft she helped an migrant successful the US debar ICE agents waiting to apprehension him successful 2025.

A erstwhile Wisconsin justice who helped a antheral debar migration agents volition not service immoderate situation clip aft a United States justice ordered her to wage a $5,000 good connected Wednesday.

Hannah Dugan, 67, a erstwhile Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge,  told the tribunal she had not acted maliciously erstwhile she shielded the antheral astatine her tribunal successful 2025, but had been trying to support “the decorum and information of the courtroom”.

“I person been formed arsenic some a scofflaw and a hero. I americium neither,” Dugan said. “I americium a nationalist servant who’s conscionable trying to bash my job.”

US District Judge Lynn Adelman said helium took into relationship Dugan’s decades of nationalist work successful his determination not to nonstop her to prison.

“This is simply a fewer minutes of behaviour for idiosyncratic who has dedicated her beingness to nationalist service,” helium said. “It’s a marked deviation from an different law-abiding life.”

At the bosom of the case was an incidental astatine the Milwaukee County Court successful April 2025, erstwhile Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrived to apprehension a Mexican antheral named Eduardo Flores-Ruiz.

Flores-Ruiz had re-entered the United States illegally a fewer days aft being deported successful 2013 and was acceptable to look successful tribunal successful beforehand of Dugan for misdemeanour artillery charges, stemming from a combat with his roommate.

When the agents arrived astatine the court, prosecutors said Dugan directed them to the main judge’s office, telling them their administrative warrant was not capable grounds to apprehension Flores-Ruiz.

When they left, Dugan led Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer retired done a backstage assemblage door. Agents saw him and caught him extracurricular the tribunal aft concisely chasing him connected foot. FBI agents arrested Dugan a week later.

A national assemblage convicted Dugan successful December of obstructing a national proceeding but acquitted her of a separate, lesser complaint of concealing a idiosyncratic from arrest.

On Wednesday, Judge Adelman said Dugan had “made a atrocious determination successful the moment”, noting she had already mislaid her job, present has a felony condemnation and had received threats that forced her to move. He besides added that her actions had not yet stopped the ICE agents from making the arrest.

Federal prosecutors had argued that sentencing guidelines called for betwixt 15 and 21 months successful prison, saying Dugan had “used the powerfulness and prestige of judicial bureau to obstruct national agents carrying retired their lawful duties successful bid to assistance an idiosyncratic evade arrest”. They said a superior condemnation was needed to bespeak the broader interaction connected the justness system.

But Dugan’s lawyers said it had been an isolated incident. They argued that she had already paid a steep price, saying she was “handcuffed and shackled during her arrest, photographed publically by plan, and intentionally shamed from seashore to seashore by the enactment of the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI.”

Among those officials was FBI Director Kash Patel, who posted a photograph of Dugan successful handcuffs aft her apprehension with the caption: “No 1 is supra the law.” Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany, an state of President Donald Trump and moving for Wisconsin governor, besides urged authorities to “lock her up”.

Dugan’s lawyers accused the Trump medication of trying to “crush” her to guarantee judicial compliance with its strategy of arresting immigrants wrong courts. Critics person likewise said prosecutors were utilizing the lawsuit to nonstop a connection to judges and different section officials who mightiness defy its migration enforcement policies.