Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan’s arrest last week by federal agents is going to make Wisconsin’s court system worse, according to attorneys who practice in the state.
Earlier this month, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) appeared at the Milwaukee County Courthouse with an administrative warrant to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a thirty-year-old Mexican immigrant accused of misdemeanor battery who was scheduled for an appearance in Dugan’s courtroom.
An administrative warrant is not signed by a judge and does not allow agents to enter private spaces to make an arrest like a judicial warrant would. While the agents sat in the hallway outside the courtroom, Dugan told Flores-Ruiz and his attorney to use a side door. The door exits into the same public hallway and one agent rode the same elevator down to the lobby as Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer. Agents let Flores-Ruiz leave the building and then arrested him on the street.
On April 25, FBI agents appeared at the courthouse again to arrest Dugan. She’s been charged with obstructing justice and harboring an individual, both felony counts. Soon after Dugan’s arrest, and before she had made her initial appearance in front of a judge, President Donald Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel were discussing the case on social media and television, accusing Dugan of being “deranged.”
Bondi said on Fox News Friday that the charges were filed against Dugan to show the administration was willing to go after anyone, even judges, if they get in the way of their efforts to deport millions of people. Bondi said interfering with ICE agents “will not be tolerated.”
“What has happened to our judiciary is beyond me,” Bondi said. “The [judges] are deranged is all I can think of. I think some of these judges think that they are beyond and above the law. They are not, and we are sending a very strong message today. If you are harboring a fugitive. . . .we will come after you and we will prosecute you. We will find you.”
From the beginning, the case displayed many missteps in an effort to show force and draw attention, says Stephen Kravit, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
“It looks like these prosecutors are completely co-opted in Trump World and aren’t really using very good judgment. You should just look at the facts and law, and there’s just no chance they’ll be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Judge Dugan was corruptly intending to avoid a government subpoena, or that she was harboring a fugitive,” he says, calling the charges “crap.”
During the initial arrest of Flores-Ruiz, Kravit questions why DEA and FBI agents are appearing at the courthouse for immigration enforcement actions and why so many agents were needed to serve an administrative warrant.
“It’s bad for justice on any level. They had six agents there, six to make an unarmed collar of a person who was accused of battery to his roommate,” Kravit says. “And they know he’s not armed. And there’s six of them. Two of them are DEA agents. Those are two agents not enforcing drug laws, which is what they’re charged to do. There’s no drugs involved here, OK? Two of them are FBI agents, who have 100 other different things to do. We probably only have six or seven DEA agents in the state.”
Kravit adds that the whole situation might have gone differently if ICE had gotten a warrant to arrest Flores-Ruiz from a judge rather than one “written by some guy in the office,” and that it will be difficult for prosecutors to prove Dugan had a corrupt intent by sending Florez-Ruiz out the side door when she could have just been avoiding a “ruckus” outside her door while trying to move on with the court schedule.
He also takes offense with the way Dugan was “perp walked” out of the courthouse when she could have just been asked to turn herself in, and questions why federal prosecutors didn’t bring the case to a grand jury first—which would have been the standard process—as well as why the country’s most powerful justice officials are discussing the case on cable news.
“The arrest warrant for the judge is a travesty, but there’s so much reasonable doubt,” he says. “Was she corruptly trying to interrupt a government proceeding? Corruptly? Was somebody paying her money? No, or was she harboring a fugitive? That’s what she’s charged with. Did she harbor a fugitive on any set of facts that you can imagine? That’s what she’s charged with. These are serious felonies. They ruin the woman’s life and all so that Pam Bondi could make a press statement.”
Dugan’s arrest and the attention her case has brought to ICE operating at county courthouses could have a chilling effect on Wisconsin’s justice system, Jeff Mandell, executive director of Law Forward, says.
“I do think that there’s a chilling effect to having federal officials prowling a state courthouse to make arrests and absent real danger or exigent circumstances, it feels like that’s not a good thing,” Mandell says. “We want people in our communities to be willing and able to show up in court. We want those people to know that they can do so without feeling like they’re getting entrapped or something like that, and that’s in all of our interests.”
For immigrants, undocumented or not, appearing in court for any reason now is a fraught decision, which could lead to witnesses to crimes not showing up to testify, Mandell says.
“If you were just going about your day and something happened to you and this person was a witness, and you needed them to help sort things out in court and things like that, then you know, you didn’t choose your witnesses,” he says. “You didn’t decide who was going to be standing there when you were in an accident or some other misfortune befell you.”
ICE’s focus on arresting people making court appearances puts those criminal defendants—who have not yet been convicted of a crime—in the position to decide between showing up to court and potentially being picked up by ICE or skipping their court date. Last week, the Wisconsin public defender’s office sent an email to private defense attorneys across the state advising them how to deal with clients asking about ICE operations in courthouses.
“Explain to the client the consequences of not showing to court like you would to any client,” the email states. “Remember you cannot tell a client not to come but you can explain that ICE has been coming to courthouses and that it may no longer be a safe haven.”
Mandell says the operations in courthouses and Dugan’s arrest are emblematic of the Trump Administration’s worst impulses.
“I think it reinforces what we’re seeing through day ninety-eight of the administration, what we’re seeing in all kinds of ways in this administration, which is an impatience, a heedlessness, a recklessness, a disregard for norms,” he says. “That many of these folks seem to believe there’s one set of rules for them and a different set of rules for someone else.”
“So they want respect paid to federal officials, but they are going to trample on state institutions and state officials,” he continues. “They want everyone to follow the law, but they are going to play fast and loose and cut corners, whether that’s using administrative warrants, whether that is avoiding grand juries to bring federal charges.”
Mandell adds that when Trump was charged with felonies, he was given the privilege of turning himself in to be booked.
“They want all of the trappings of tremendous respect for their offices, but they are not going to afford even a modicum of respect to others,” Mandell continues, “which we see handcuffing and perp walking Judge Dugan out of the courthouse without even the common courtesy of a phone call to ask if she might be willing to turn herself in, which, of course, is how the President himself insisted on all of his bookings being handled.”
Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on the website of the Wisconsin Examiner. It is reprinted here with permission.