FBI arrests Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan for obstruction in immigration case

The FBI on Friday arrested a Wisconsin county judge on obstruction charges, accusing her of preventing the arrest of a man by immigration authorities during a federal law enforcement operation at her courthouse.

FBI Director Kash Patel said Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan “intentionally misdirected federal agents away” from an immigrant who is in the U.S. illegally and was set to be arrested. 

Patel said that the man, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, was later arrested and is currently being detained. 

Dugan was arrested at 8 a.m. on Friday at the courthouse where she works, according to a federal law enforcement source. She was charged with two counts of obstruction and released from detention after making an initial appearance in federal court.

According to a sworn statement by an FBI agent, Flores-Ruiz was deported from the United States in 2013 and illegally reentered the U.S. During this period, Flores-Ruiz was accused of committing battery. 

After a fingerprint match from Flores-Ruiz’s first arrest in 2013 and a local case in Milwaukee, a warrant for his arrest and deportation was issued by ICE. 

While Flores-Ruiz was scheduled to appear before Dugan for a criminal court appearance, law enforcement waited outside of her courtroom to arrest him on an administrative warrant.

The FBI agent said in the statement that “arrest team members reported that while waiting outside of the courtroom, a woman approached and took photos of arrest team members,” just before Flores-Ruiz arrived at the court with his attorney.

A courtroom deputy told the FBI agent that the woman who took the photos of the arrest team showed the pictures to Judge Dugan while she was on the bench in her courtroom, and “Dugan became visibly angry, commented that the situation was ‘absurd,’ left the bench, and entered chambers.”

Judge Dugan then approached the arrest team with another judge in the public hallway. 

“Witnesses uniformly reported that Judge Dugan was visibly upset and had a confrontational, angry demeanor,” the agent wrote. Dugan, according to witnesses, told the arrest team to go to the chief judge’s office to speak with them about the permissibility of making the arrest inside the courthouse, and looked around the hallway near her courtroom to seek out other law enforcement officers who were waiting to arrest Flores-Ruiz.

One agent, who Dugan did not recognize as part of the arrest team, remained in the hallway waiting for Flores-Ruiz.

After that, the special agent said multiple witnesses in Dugan’s courtroom saw her say, “Wait, come with me,” to Flores-Ruiz as he headed toward the public courtroom exit where the officers were waiting.

“Judge Dugan then escorted Flores-Ruiz and his counsel out of the courtroom through the ‘jury door,’ which leads to a nonpublic area of the courthouse,” the agent wrote, adding that Dugan also instructed the man’s attorney to also leave the courtroom through that door.

Agents later spotted Flores-Ruiz “looking around the hallway,” in the courthouse and followed him out of the courthouse, where a foot chase ensued and he was arrested. 

Dugan’s arraignment is set for May 15.

Prior to Dugan’s arrest, President Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, told CBS News in an interview that interference with deportations is considered “evading arrest.”

“So we got a lot of, in my opinion, some radical judges who are trying to stop what we’re doing,” Homan said. “Then you got, you know, NGOs out there, and you got congressional representatives like AOC (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and the rest of ‘the Squad,’ saying they’re going to educate people to their constitutional rights on not opening the door for others.” 

Homan went on: “We all know that it’s about evading arrest. Don’t open your door when ICE comes to your door. You have an order of deportation issued by a federal judge. If you and I ignored that order, we’d be in jail. But you’ve got members of Congress out there saying, ‘You don’t have to open the door for ICE, they need a warrant. You don’t have to talk to ICE.’ It’s just, we all know what the end game is. The end game is, yeah, you can call it educating constitutional rights. Don’t disagree. But we all know what the end game is: evade arrest, put off the arrest. So, that is hurting. But real soon, people are going to see that that’s no longer going to work.”

When questioned about the issue of due process for immigrants, Homan responded, “They get due process, everyone gets due process.”

Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, called the arrest a “gravely serious and drastic move” in a statement on social media. “While details of this exact case remain minimal, this action fits into the deeply concerning pattern of this President’s lawless behavior and undermining courts and Congress’s checks on his power,” Baldwin said.

Who is Hannah Dugan, the judge arrested by the FBI?

Dugan has served as a judge in Milwaukee County Circuit Court since 2016, when she was elected with about 65% of the vote. She was later reelected in 2022 after running unopposed.

A 1987 graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School, Dugan worked as a civil law attorney before joining the bench, according to her LinkedIn page. She described some of her specialties as “disability, Social Security, elder, and veterans’ law.” 

Before that, Dugan served as executive director of Catholic Charities of Southeastern Wisconsin for three years, and worked as an attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee and Legal Action of Wisconsin — two nonprofits that provide free civil legal representation.

contributed to this report.