In April of this year, ICE agents showed up to Milwaukee’s county courthouse to arrest a man. He was at the court for a hearing in front of Judge Hannah Dugan. Dugan was later accused of helping the man evade ICE. She was arrested by the FBI.
Her trial on federal obstruction charges was set to start this week but has been delayed. So what should we know about her case and the precedent it could set?
WUWM’s Jimmy Gutierrez talked with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter John Diedrich as part of our Check-In series following updates related to immigration.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity
John Diedrich: The criminal complaint and the indictment allege that she helped Edward Flores-Ruiz, who's an undocumented gentleman who was in her courtroom in Milwaukee County Court, elude ICE or federal immigration officers.
She’s charged with two counts: one is obstructing justice or obstructing a federal agency, and the other is helping to hide an individual. The two counts against her are in federal court in Milwaukee.
Jimmy Gutierrez: This week was when she was supposed to have her trial. What happened there? Why the delay?
Yeah, that date was originally set under the Speedy Trial Act. Under federal law, it says so many days will pass and then the defendant has a right to a trial. What’s interesting in federal court is that this is a very fast timeline. This happened in April and then was going to trial already in July. That’s not usually the way federal prosecutors and federal law enforcement work. More often, they have a long time to plan out a case — there might be wiretaps and so forth.
It was very clear early on that Judge [Lynn] Adelman, who is the trial judge, was signaling to both sides that there's going to be a lot of back and forth, and we're probably not going to be able to hit that trial date, which was July 21. Now we're looking at probably a couple months out, maybe later this year. But it's really not clear yet.
Meanwhile, Judge Dugan has been placed on administrative leave and is at home collecting checks. What’s next for her?
That was one of the points that her defense team said when they were arguing for a faster trial. We want some resolution. She wants to get back on the job.
She’s been suspended by the state Supreme Court — which, interestingly, has a liberal majority. So some expected that maybe that wouldn’t happen. And she is being paid. There was some discussion in the Legislature — it’s not really moved very far — about maybe withdrawing that pay, but that’s not nearly concluded at this point.
At this point, Judge Dugan is waiting like any defendant would be for their day in court.
What we’re watching now is how Judge Adelman rules, and that will tell us the next stages and if we might see a trial. If he dismisses the case, it seems like the government would appeal. And that would go to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. That would tack on quite a bit of time because you’d have to make orals there and submit briefings and then get a ruling.
If he says no to the dismissal, then we might be going to a quicker trial, and it would be up to the defense as to whether they want to appeal that decision to the 7th Circuit. That is really a key decision.
What it gets me thinking about is that there's an obstruction charge against a judge — a sitting judge. What does this highlight about the changing immigration landscape under a Trump administration? What can we glean there?
So people are divided. At the Journal Sentinel, we did a straw poll — not anything highly scientific — but we did something on our website. It was surprising, the division of readers who see this case very differently. Some people see this as clearly an overreach by the Trump administration — trying to intimidate, and part of a war against judges. This is an intimidation effort. And other people say, hey, this judge has a lot of power — judges have a lot of power to do things in their courtroom.
And when you look at the administration and some of the comments that were made afterward, it was clear that this was going to be handled in a big and public way. Just the fact that she was arrested by the FBI — how it went down — it does appear that there was maximum publicity.
Critics of the Trump administration said that was not accidental. That was to send a message to other judges to not get in the way of our immigration [crackdown] efforts.
The whole country has eyes on this case and Milwaukee — what precedent does this set?
What's really interesting when you read the briefings is that they're talking about case law that goes back to like 1607 or something. And so the significance of this case is really a big historic marker in our country in terms of where the federal government has come in and charged a sitting judge with something that is not taking bribes, that is not murder or something like that.
This could potentially end up at the Supreme Court. That is certainly within the realm of possibility. I think it's important for people to understand that there's something really significant going on here. And there may be a precedent set that could reach across the country coming right out of Milwaukee.
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