MILWAUKEE — A jury convicted a Wisconsin judge Thursday of obstructing federal agents’ arrest of an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, giving President Donald Trump’s administration a rare win in its prosecutions of public officials who have challenged his agenda.
The jury found Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan guilty of a felony, obstructing an official proceeding, but acquitted her of a misdemeanor, concealing a person from arrest. She could be sentenced to up to five years in prison.
“She was a frustrated and angry judge who was fed up, who decided to corruptly take matters into her own hands,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Brown Watzka told jurors during closing arguments.
Dugan, who was first elected in 2016, will no longer be able to continue as a judge because Wisconsin’s constitution bars people convicted of felonies from holding public office. The state Supreme Court in April suspended Dugan, 66, from hearing cases while the charges against her were pending.
Judges are rarely prosecuted for their actions in or around their courtroom. Dugan’s arrest made her a flash point in broader debates over the Trump administration’s aggressive stance toward public officials it sees as foes. Critics derided the prosecution as political and retributive. Many on the right said Dugan’s conduct was part of a “deep state” mentality that had led to lax enforcement of immigration laws.
The verdict comes as the Trump administration has struggled with the prosecutions of two of Trump’s critics, former FBI director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D). Courts have dismissed charges against both, but the Justice Department has sought to reinstate them.
The Wisconsin case stems from Dugan’s response to agents from the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement showing up in the hallway outside her courtroom in April to arrest Eduardo Flores Ruiz. He had been deported in 2013 and was again in the United States illegally.
Flores Ruiz was appearing in Dugan’s court on misdemeanor battery charges, and Dugan confronted the agents when she learned of their presence. She sent them down the hall to the office of the county’s chief judge and, while most of the agents were away, postponed Flores Ruiz’s hearing and directed him and his attorney out a back door in her courtroom.
The back door took them to a short, private hallway that leads to the public hallway where the agents were waiting. Flores Ruiz and his attorney emerged from the private hallway into the public hallway about 12 feet from the main entrance to Dugan’s courtroom. An agent followed Flores Ruiz and, with his fellow agents, chased him on foot and arrested him outside the courthouse. Flores Ruiz was deported in November.
On the first day of the trial Monday, prosecutors played a recording of Dugan talking to her court reporter about using the back door to the courtroom and noting that the private hallway could be taken to a flight of stairs. When Dugan’s clerk asked whether she should show Flores Ruiz and his attorney the door, Dugan said: “I’ll do it. I’ll get the heat.”
During closing arguments Thursday, Dugan’s defense attorney Jason Luczak said the judge was trying to figure out how immigration arrests were to take place when court rules were unclear.
“I would say this case is riddled with doubts,” he told the jurors.
Another county judge, Laura Gramling Perez, testified Thursday that the judiciary did not have a clear policy on how immigration arrests could take place in the courthouse.
Tom Barrett, a former Milwaukee mayor and U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg under President Joe Biden, also testified Thursday.
“I think she is extremely honest and I think she will tell you exactly how she feels,” said Barrett, who was not at the courthouse the day of the incident but has known Dugan for more than 50 years.
The Trump administration highlighted the case from the start. FBI Director Kash Patel was the first to make her arrest public with a social media post, and later that day he posted a photo of her being led away in handcuffs. Attorney General Pam Bondi talked up the case in television appearances and accused Dugan of “protecting a criminal defendant over victims of crime.”
The case mirrors one brought by Trump’s administration during his first term, when it charged a Massachusetts judge in 2018 with helping an undocumented immigrant escape from a courthouse. Those charges were dropped in 2022 under an agreement that required the judge to report herself to the state’s judicial discipline commission.
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