STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Jury selection starts in a Milwaukee courthouse today in the criminal trial against Hannah Dugan. She's a county judge. According to federal prosecutors, she helped a man evade immigration agents when they showed up at her courtroom to arrest him. Maayan Silver from member station WUWM reports.
MAAYAN SILVER, BYLINE: Judge Hannah Dugan pleaded not guilty in May to charges of obstructing a proceeding and concealing an individual to prevent arrest. At the time, protesters supporting Dugan, including Democratic Wisconsin state Senator Chris Larson, railed against the indictment outside the federal courthouse, calling it politically motivated.
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CHRIS LARSON: Are we going to keep showing up until they drop the charges against Hannah Dugan?
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: Yeah.
SILVER: According to the criminal complaint, on April 18, ICE showed up to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, an undocumented immigrant. He was appearing in Dugan's court on misdemeanor battery charges. Prosecutors alleged that Dugan became visibly upset once she became aware of ICE's presence, that she sent the agents to speak with the chief judge, that she had Flores-Ruiz's case rescheduled, that she allowed him and his attorney to exit the courtroom through the jury door and that both ended up in the public hallway where ICE agents started following Flores-Ruiz. He was later caught outside after a foot chase and has since been deported. FBI Director Kash Patel and President Trump himself applauded the arrest on social media, as did Attorney General Pam Bondi on Fox News the day of Dugan's indictment.
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PAM BONDI: I think some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law, and they are not.
SILVER: NPR reached out to Judge Dugan and her attorneys, who declined comment. Members of her defense team issued a statement before her arraignment, saying, quote, "as she said after her unnecessary arrest, Judge Dugan asserts her innocence and looks forward to being vindicated in court."
It's rare for a sitting judge to face criminal charges. And Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston, says both sides will be looking for impartial jurors.
JOSH BLACKMAN: And I think there's been a lot of scrutinizing every juror. What do they say on social media? What are their views on Trump? What are their views on immigration?
SILVER: Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who's now a professor at Loyola Law School, says until President Trump's first term, state courthouses were by and large off-limits to immigration authorities.
LAURIE LEVENSON: There was this general understanding and respect that ICE could do their arrests. They could go people's homes. They could take them off the streets. But the courthouses should not be disrupted for lots of reasons because you don't want people not to come to their court proceedings.
SILVER: Levenson says now, with the ramping up of immigration enforcement in this country, all that has gone out the window. During the trial, Levenson says, attorneys will likely argue about Judge Dugan's mindset, including whether Dugan was trying to conceal Flores-Ruiz.
LEVENSON: Whether she was trying to impede and obstruct a proceeding or whether she was trying to do what she thought was her job - run her courtroom, deal with her cases - and try to keep from having the Department of Homeland Security interfere with that.
SILVER: And that will be up to the jury to decide when the trial begins in earnest next week.
For NPR News, I'm Maayan Silver in Milwaukee.
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