Hannah Dugan is arrested in court where she works after agency to say she helped man escape the authorities
The FBI arrested a judge on Friday that the agency accused of obstruction after she said she helped a man escape from US immigration authorities when they tried to arrest him in his court.
The county judge, Hannah Dugan, was arrested in court where he works in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at 8:30 am, local time on Friday, on charges of obstruction, confirmed a spokesman for the US delegate service to Guardian.
Kash Patel, the FBI director appointed by Trump, wrote in the middle of the morning at the X: “We believe that Judge Dugan intentionally deflected the federal agents of the subject to be arrested in his court, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, allowing the subject – an illegal foreigner – to escape prison.”
He said the agents still managed to arrest the target after he was “persecuted” and that he was in custody. Patel added that “the obstruction of the judge has created a growing danger to the public.” The FBI director deleted the publication minutes later for unknown reasons, but federal agents confirmed various media that the prison had occurred.
Dugan briefly appeared to the Federal Court in Milwaukee on Friday morning, before being released from custody. Your next hearing will be on May 15th.
“Judge Dugan deeply regrets and protests against her arrest. She was not made in the name of public security,” said her lawyer, Craig Mastantuono, during the hearing. He refused to comment with an Associated Press reporter after his court hearing.
A crowd formed outside the court, shouting, “Free the judge now.”
Senator Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat who represents Wisconsin, called the arrest of an acting judge of an “extremely serious and drastic measure” that “threatens to violate” the separation of powers between the executive and judiciary powers.
“Make no mistake, we have no kings in this country and we are a democracy governed by laws that everyone should fulfill,” Baldwin said in an email statement after Dugan’s arrest.
The arrest of the judge drastically increases tensions between federal and state and local authorities amid Donald Trump’s anti-immigration repression. The arrest also occurs amid a growing battle between the Trump government and the Federal Judiciary on the president’s executive actions regarding deportations and other matters.
In a statement, Wisconsin’s governor, Democrat Tony Evers, accused the Trump government of repeatedly use “dangerous rhetoric to attack and try to undermine our judiciary at all levels.”
“I have deep respect for the rule of law, the judiciary of our nation, the importance of judges make impartial decisions without fear or favoritism, and for the efforts of police authorities to hold the people who commit a crime,” Evers said. “I will continue to deposit my faith in our justice system while this situation unfolds in court.”
It was reported on Tuesday that the FBI was investigating if Dugan “tried to help an immigrant undocumented to avoid arrest when this person was scheduled to attend court last week,” according to an email obtained by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Dugan told Journal Sentinel, “Almost all the facts about the ‘tips’ in his email are inaccurate.”
Dugan’s arrest is the first publicly known case of the Trump government accusing a local authority to allegedly interfere with the application of the immigration law.
Emil Bove, the Department of Justice’s leading attorney general, issued a memorandum in January requesting prosecutors to make criminal proceedings against local government authorities that obstructed the efforts to supervise the immigration of the federal government.
Bove stated in the three -page memorandum: “Federal law prohibits state actors and places resist, obstruct and otherwise fail to comply with orders or legal requests related to immigration.”
Dugan was accused of federal prosecution and concealment crimes of individual to avoid arrest, according to documents filed in the court.
The administration claimed that, at the original meeting, the judge ordered immigration agents to leave the court, saying that they had no warrant signed by a judge to arrest the suspect who were looking for, who was in court for other reasons.
Prosecutors said Dugan became “visibly furious” when he learned that immigration agents were planning a prison in his court, according to the case file.
Dugan ordered immigration officials to talk to the chief judge and then escort Flores Ruiz and his lawyer for a door that led to a non -public area of the court, says the prosecution’s complaint.
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, citing sources that it did not identify, said Dugan led Flores Ruiz and his lawyer to a private corridor and a public area, but did not hide them in a jury deliberation room, as some accused her of doing.
Dugan was elected district judge for the first time in 2016 and, before that, was head of the local branch of the Catholic Charities, which offers refugee resettlement programs. Previously, he was a lawyer at the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee, which serves low -income people.
The case is similar to one moved during the first Trump administration against a Massachusetts judge, who was accused of helping a man escape the back door of a court to escape an immigration agent that awaited him.
This accusation generated indignation in many in the legal community, which criticized the case for political motivation. Biden government prosecutors filed the case against Newton’s district judge, Shelley Joseph in 2022 after she agreed to submit to a state agency investigating allegations of misconduct of court members.
Originally published by The Guardian on 25/04/2025
Associated Press contributed to the report
Source: https://www.ocafezinho.com/2025/04/25/fbi-prende-juiza-de-wisconsin-e-a-acusa-de-obstruir-autoridades-de-imigracao/
