MILWAUKEE (AP) – The FBI arrested a Milwaukee judge accused of helping a man to escape the immigration authorities on Friday, degenerating a confrontation between the Trump administration and the local authorities on the President of the President of the President Balaying immigration repression.
Milwaukee County Circuit Court, Hannah Dugan, is accused of having escorted the man and his lawyer’s lawyer through the jury door last week after learning that the immigration authorities asked for his arrest. The man was placed in police custody outside the courthouse after agents continued him on foot.
The judge’s arrest considerably increases tensions between federal authorities and local authorities, which the administration of President Donald Trump accused of interfering with his immigration priorities. He also arrives in the midst of a growing battle between the Trump administration and the federal judiciary on the president’s executive actions on deportations and other questions.
The Wisconsin Democratic Governor, Tony Evers, in a declaration on arrest, accused the Trump administration of repeatedly using “a dangerous rhetoric to attack and try to undermine our judiciary at all levels”.
“I have a deep respect for the rule of law, the judicial power of our nation, the importance of judges who make decisions impartially without fear or favor, and the efforts of the police to keep people responsible if they commit a crime,” said Evers. “I will continue to trust our justice system while this situation takes place before the court of the law.”
Friday morning, Dugan was arrested by the FBI on the grounds of the courthouse, according to the spokesman for the American service Brady McCarron. She briefly appeared before the Milwaukee Federal Court later Friday before being released from the guard. She faces accusations of “hiding an individual to prevent his discovery and his arrest” and obstructing or hindering a procedure.
“Judge Dugan regrets and unreservedly protests his arrest. He was not made in the interest of public security,” said his lawyer, Craig Mastanuono, during the hearing. He refused to comment on a journalist from Associated Press following his appearance before the court.
The court documents suggest that Dugan was alerted to the presence of American immigration and customs agents in the courthouse by his clerk, who was informed by a lawyer whom they seemed to be in the corridor.
The Affidavit of the FBI describes Dugan as “visibly angry” in the face of the arrival of immigration agents in the courthouse and says that it pronounced the “absurd” situation before leaving the bench and withdrawing in its rooms. He said that she and another judge later approached members of the arrest team within the courthouse, displaying what witnesses have described as “conflictual and angry behavior”.
After a back and forth with officers on the mandate of the man, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, she demanded that the arrest team is expressed with the chief judge and led them from the courtroom, said the Affidavit.
After having managed the arrest team to the office of the chief judge, the investigators said that Dugan returned to the courtroom and was heard words to “wait, come with me” before Usher Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer by a jury door to a non-public zone of the courthouse. The action was unusual, said the affidavit, because “only deputies, juries, judicial staff and defendants in detention escorted by deputies used the rear jury door. Lawyers and defendants who were not in police custody never used the jury door. ”
The Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the man faced charges of domestic violence and that the victims were sitting in the courtroom with the state prosecutors when the judge helped him escape the arrest of immigration.
The judge “put the lives of our agents of the police in danger. She put the lives of citizens in danger. A street prosecution – it is absurd that this had to happen,” said Bondi on Fox News Channel.
The American senator Tammy Baldwin, a democrat who represents the Wisconsin, described the arrest of a judge in office a “serious and drastic movement” which “threatens to violate” the separation of power between the executive and judicial branches.
“Make no mistake, we have no kings in this country and we are a democracy governed by laws that everyone must respect,” said Baldwin in a statement sent by e-mail. “By relentlessly attacking the judicial system, drinking court orders and by arresting an in -practice judge, this president puts fundamental democratic values that Wisconsinites are expensive on the line.”
The case is similar to that provided during the first Trump administration against a Massachusetts judge, who was accused of having helped a man to sneak a back door of a courthouse to escape an agent of pending immigration.
This prosecution has aroused the indignation of many members of the legal community, who criticized the case as a political motivation. The prosecutors abandoned the case against the district judge of Newton Shelley Joseph in 2022 under the Democratic Administration of Biden after agreeing to refer to a state agency which investigates the allegations of misconduct by the members of the bench.
The Ministry of Justice had previously pointed out that he was going to repress local officials who thwarted federal immigration efforts.
The ministry in January ordered prosecutors to investigate potential criminal charges All state and local authorities who hamper or hamper federal functions. As a potential tracks for prosecution, a note has cited a plot offense as well as a law illegally prohibiting the wearing of people in the country.
Dugan was elected in 2016 to the Branch of the County Court 31. She also sat in the homologation and civilian divisions of the court, according to his biography candidate.
Before being elected public, Dugan exercised legal action by Wisconsin and the legal aid company. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1981 with a baccalaureate in the arts and obtained her doctorate from the juris in 1987 at school.
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Richer reported Washington. The journalists of Associated Press Eric Tucker in Washington and Corey Williams in Detroit contributed.
