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 (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.
A federal jury convicted Dugan in December of obstructing a federal proceeding but acquitted her of a separate, lesser charge of concealing a person from arrest.
On Wednesday, Judge Adelman said Dugan had “made a bad decision in the moment”, noting she had already lost her job, now has a felony conviction and had received threats that forced her to move. He also added that her actions had not ultimately stopped the ICE agents from making the arrest.
Federal prosecutors had argued that sentencing guidelines called for between 15 and 21 months in prison, saying Dugan had “used the power and prestige of judicial office to obstruct federal agents carrying out their lawful duties in order to help an individual evade arrest”. They said a serious sentence was needed to reflect the broader impact on the justice system.
But Dugan’s lawyers said it had been an isolated incident. They argued that she had already paid a steep price, saying she was “handcuffed and shackled during her arrest, photographed publicly by plan, and intentionally shamed from coast to coast by the leadership of the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI.”
Among those officials was FBI Director Kash Patel, who posted a photo of Dugan in handcuffs after her arrest with the caption: “No one is above the law.” Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany, an ally of President Donald Trump and running for Wisconsin governor, also urged authorities to “lock her up”.
Dugan’s lawyers accused the Trump administration of trying to “crush” her to ensure judicial compliance with its strategy of arresting immigrants inside courts. Critics have similarly said prosecutors were using the case to send a message to judges and other local officials who might resist its immigration enforcement policies.
