Federal Prosecutors Urge Court Not to Dismiss Case Against Judge Dugan

Federal prosecutors told a federal court on Monday that it should hear a criminal case against Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan after they say she acted unilaterally to obstruct immigration enforcement.

Prosecutors made those arguments in documents filed Monday afternoon. They urged U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman to reject a motion seeking to toss out criminal charges against Dugan. She’s accused of helping a man attempt to evade arrest by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

Dugan is charged with obstructing a federal proceeding and with concealing an individual to prevent his arrest. That’s after she led a man through a side door of her courtroom in April, prosecutors say.

But, last month, Dugan’s attorneys filed a motion, asking a judge to dismiss the case.

They argued that judicial immunity protects Dugan’s ability to carry out official acts. They also argued that, by arresting and prosecuting Dugan, federal officials had overstepped their authority and infringed on Wisconsin’s sovereignty.

“This is an extraordinary prosecution that poses a threat to federalism and judicial independence,” Dugan’s attorneys wrote in a motion to dismiss.

But, in their response filed Monday, U.S. attorneys rejected those arguments.

“Put simply, nothing in the indictment or the anticipated evidence at trial supports Dugan’s assertion that agents ‘disrupted’ the court’s docket,” prosecutors wrote. “Instead, all events arose from Dugan’s unilateral, non-judicial, and unofficial actions in obstructing a federal immigration matter over which she, as a Wisconsin state judge, had no authority.”

Prosecutors also argued that a decision to dismiss the criminal charges against Dugan would be “unprecedented,” and significantly expand how the principle of judicial immunity is understood.

“Such a ruling would give state court judges carte blanche to interfere with valid law enforcement actions by federal agents in public hallways of a courthouse, and perhaps even beyond,” U.S. attorneys wrote. “Dugan’s desired ruling would, in essence, say that judges are ‘above the law,’ and uniquely entitled … to interfere with federal law enforcement.”

In the latest filing, prosecutors have laid out their most forceful arguments in the case thus far, said Carl Tobias, a law professor who studies federal courts at the University of Richmond.

“I do wonder what the judge assigned to the case will make of this, because it’s pretty sweeping in its dismissal of the arguments made by her counsel,” Tobias said of the filing.

According to court documents, federal agents showed up at the Milwaukee County courthouse on April 18 with an administrative warrant to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz. Flores-Ruiz was in the country illegally, and he had been scheduled to appear in Dugan’s courtroom on misdemeanor domestic violence charges, court documents say.

After learning that ICE agents had arrived to arrest someone, prosecutors say Dugan became visibly upset and asked to see a judicial warrant, which is a warrant signed by a judge. An agent told her they didn’t have a judicial warrant, but offered to show her an administrative warrant, which is a warrant issued by a federal agency.

After several of the agents left Dugan’s courtroom to talk to the county’s chief judge, prosecutors say Dugan led Flores-Ruiz and his attorney out of the courtroom through a door often used by jurors. Dugan also told the pair the court appearance would be scheduled for a later date, prosecutors say.

Immigration agents later arrested Flores-Ruiz at an intersection near the courthouse after chasing him on foot.

The case against Dugan is set for trial in late July.

But given the high-profile nature of the charges, Tobias said it’s possible that Adelman will schedule oral arguments before that on Dugan’s motion for dismissal.

More than 100 former state and federal court judges have signed on to a friend of the court brief in support of Dugan’s request to toss out the case.

That includes former U.S. Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig and former Massachusetts U.S. District Court Nancy Gertner, who published an op-ed Monday in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. They called the prosecution of Dugan “unwarranted,” and said she acted within her authority as a judge to control her our own courtroom.

“The integrity of our justice system fundamentally hinges on the independence of its judges,” the op-ed said. “This profound responsibility is in turn safeguarded by judicial immunity, a foundational principle with deep historical roots in English common law that is firmly embedded in American jurisprudence.”

Demonstrators have turned out in Milwaukee to support Dugan, and to protest immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump’s administration.

The case has ignited backlash from people who fear the president is trying to intimidate a judge, Tobias said.

“(Some people say) this is really an effort to to cow judges and make them not be as independent people would like them to be,” Tobias observed.

In May, a federal grand jury determined there was probable cause to indict Dugan on two counts.

Dugan pleaded not guilty to both those charges earlier this spring. She hasn’t been hearing cases in Milwaukee County after being suspended from her judicial duties while the criminal case against her is pending.

Federal prosecutors urge court not to dismiss case against Milwaukee County judge accused of helping man avoid ICE was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.