MIlwaukee – The FBI arrested a Milwaukee judge on Friday accused of helping a man to escape the immigration authorities, degenerating a confrontation between the Trump administration and the judiciary on the repression of the immigration of the Republican president.
FBI director Kash Patel announced on social networks the arrest of the Milwaukee County Count of County Judge, Hannah Dugan, who declared “intentionally poorly directed” of federal agents far from a man they were trying to detention in his courthouse last week.
“Fortunately, our agents have hunted the PERP on foot and has been in detention since, but the judge's obstruction has created an increased danger for the public,” wrote Patel.
Friday morning, Dugan was arrested by the FBI on the grounds of the courthouse, according to the spokesman for the American service Brady McCarron. She briefly appeared before the Milwaukee Federal Court later Friday before being released from the guard. His next appearance in court will take place on May 15.
“Judge Dugan regrets and unreservedly protests his arrest. He was not made in the interest of public security,” said his lawyer, Craig Mastanuono, during the hearing. He refused to comment on a journalist from Associated Press following his appearance before the court.
Dugan is accused of “hiding an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest” and obstructing or hampering procedure. She is accused of escorting the man, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, and his lawyer for the courtroom by the jury door on April 18 as a means of helping to avoid her arrest, according to a FBI affidavit filed in court.
Affidavit suggests that Dugan was alerted to the presence of US immigration and application of customs in the courthouse by his clerk, who was informed by a lawyer whom they seemed to be in the corridor.
The Affidavit describes Dugan as “visibly angry” in the face of the arrival of immigration agents in the courthouse and says that it pronounced the “absurd” situation before leaving the bench and withdrawing in its rooms. He said that she and another judge later approached members of the arrest team within the courthouse, displaying what witnesses have described as “conflictual and angry behavior”.
She asked one of the officers if they had a judicial mandate and she was told that the mandate was rather administrative. After a back and forth on the mandate, the affidavit said, she demanded that the arrest team is expressed with the chief judge and removed them from the courtroom.
After having managed the arrest team to the office of the chief judge, the investigators said that Dugan returned to the courtroom and was heard words to “wait, come with me” before Usher Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer by a jury door to a non-public zone of the courthouse. The action was unusual, said the affidavit, because “only deputies, juries, judicial staff and defendants in detention escorted by deputies used the rear jury door. Lawyers and defendants who were not in police custody never used the jury door. ”
Dugan’s arrest intervenes in the midst of an increasing quarrel between the Trump administration and the judiciary on the president's executive actions on immigration and other questions. Trump administration officials brutally criticized what they have described as “militant” judges who, they said, went beyond their authority and have unjustly involved the president's executive powers by blocking many of his efforts.
The American senator Tammy Baldwin, a democrat who represents the Wisconsin, described the arrest of a judge in office a “serious and drastic movement” which “threatens to violate” the separation of power between the executive and judicial branches.
“Make no mistake, we have no kings in this country and we are a democracy governed by laws that everyone must respect,” said Baldwin in a statement sent by e-mail. “By relentlessly attacking the justice system, drinking legal orders and by arresting an in -office judge, this president puts fundamental democratic values that Wisconsinites are dear to the line.”
The case is similar to that provided during the first Trump administration against a Massachusetts judge, who was accused of having helped a man to sneak a back door of a courthouse to escape an agent of pending immigration.
This prosecution has aroused the indignation of many members of the legal community, who criticized the case as a political motivation. The prosecutors abandoned the case against the district judge of Newton Shelley Joseph in 2022 under the Democratic Administration of Biden after agreeing to refer to a state agency which investigates the allegations of misconduct by the members of the bench.
The Ministry of Justice had previously pointed out that he was going to repress local officials who thwarted federal immigration efforts.
In January, the ministry ordered prosecutors to investigate for potential criminal accusations of all state and local authorities who hinder or hamper federal functions. As a potential tracks for prosecution, a note has cited a plot offense as well as a law illegally prohibiting the wearing of people in the country.
“No one is above the law,” said Prosecutor General Pam Bondi on Friday in an article on social networks.
Dugan was elected in 2016 to the Branch of the County Court 31. She also sat in the homologation and civilian divisions of the court, according to his biography candidate.
Before being elected public, Dugan exercised legal action by Wisconsin and the legal aid company. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1981 with a baccalaureate in the arts and obtained her doctorate from the juris in 1987 at school.
—Rache reported to Washington. The journalist of Associated Press, Eric Tucker in Washington, contributed.
