Former Wisconsin judge avoids prison in ICE obstruction case

Hannah Dugan’s sentence comes after she helped an immigrant in the US avoid ICE agents waiting to arrest him in 2025.A former Wisconsin judge who helped a man avoid Immigration agents will not serve any prison time after a United States judge ordered her to pay a $5,000 fine on Wednesday.Hannah Dugan, 67, a former Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge, told the court she had not acted maliciously when she shielded the man at her court in 2025, but had been trying to maintain “the decorum and safety of the courtroom”.“I have been cast as both a scofflaw and a hero. I am neither,” Dugan said. “I am a public servant who’s just trying to do my job.”US District Judge Lynn Adelman said he took into account Dugan’s decades of public service in his decision not to send her to prison.“This is a few minutes of conduct for someone who has dedicated her life to public service,” he said. “It’s a marked deviation from an otherwise law-abiding life.”At the heart of the case was an incident at the Milwaukee County Court in April 2025, when Immigration-and-customs-enforcement" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="142597" data-entity-type="organization">Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrived to arrest a Mexican man named Eduardo Flores-Ruiz.Flores-Ruiz had re-entered the United States illegally a few days after being deported in 2013 and was set to appear in court in front of Dugan for misdemeanour battery charges, stemming from a fight with his roommate.When the agents arrived at the court, prosecutors said Dugan directed them to the chief judge’s office, telling them their administrative warrant was not sufficient grounds to arrest Flores-Ruiz.When they left, Dugan led Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer out through a private jury door. Agents saw him and caught him outside the court after briefly chasing him on foot. FBI agents arrested Dugan a week later.