By Andrew Goudsward and Diana Novak Jones
Dec 18 (Reuters) – A Wisconsin judge was found guilty on Thursday of helping a migrant evade a planned immigration arrest outside her courtroom, a victory for U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration in its effort to deter interference with its hardline immigration tactics, U.S. media outlets reported.
The federal jury delivered a mixed verdict on Hannah Dugan, 66, an elected judge on the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, acquitting her of one of the two charges she faced. She was convicted of obstructing a federal proceeding and cleared of a lesser charge accusing her of concealing a person from arrest, according to media reports.
Dugan had pleaded not guilty. A spokesperson for her legal team did not immediately respond for requests for comment.
The unusual case put a judge on trial for actions she took in her courtroom while overseeing cases and reflects tensions over the Trump administration’s use of courthouses to stage arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The prosecution stemmed from a directive by the Justice Department ordering prosecutors to pursue cases of alleged obstruction of ICE enforcement by local activists and officials resisting Trump’s drive for mass deportations.
Prosecutors alleged that Dugan intended to help a migrant from Mexico, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, escape an immigration arrest when he was scheduled to appear before her on domestic violence charges. They said she diverted federal agents and escorted the man and his attorney out of a non-public exit of her courtroom.
“She was focused on orchestrating Flores-Ruiz’s escape,” prosecutor Keith Alexander said in court. “She knew what she was doing. She did it anyway.”
Dugan’s lawyers had argued that she was following a policy directing staff to alert a supervisor to the presence of ICE in the courthouse. They argued that the incident took place at a time of confusion and uncertainty following two prior ICE arrests in the courthouse.
“All she did was send him out into the hallway with his lawyer,” Dugan’s lawyer Steven Biskupic told the jury during the trial.
DUGAN DIVERTED ICE AGENTS, PROSECUTORS SAY
Agents from ICE and other agencies, dressed in plainclothes, planned to arrest the man in a hallway outside Dugan’s courtroom following his hearing.
Dugan angrily confronted the agents and directed them to the chief judge’s office after learning that ICE was present, according to witness testimony in the case. She then dealt privately with Flores-Ruiz’s case and directed the man and his attorney through a private “jury door,” prosecutors alleged.
Flores-Ruiz walked through a public hallway and was arrested outside the courthouse following a brief foot chase.
Dugan was first elected as a county judge in 2016, and before that served as head of the local branch of Catholic Charities, which provides refugee resettlement programs, among other services.
She spent much of her early career as a lawyer at the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee, which serves poor people.
Justice Department officials touted the case as an example of prosecutors’ willingness to pursue powerful public officials. The Trump administration has escalated immigration enforcement at state and local courthouses, viewing them as a reliable and safe venue to make arrests.
Activists and some judges have criticized those efforts, arguing the presence of ICE agents undermines trust in the legal system and could dissuade people from seeking justice.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward and Diana Novak Jones; editing by Scott Malone and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
