CNN
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The arrest of a Wisconsin state judge for allegedly helping an undocumented immigrant avoid arrest has opened a new front in the Trump administration’s aggressive attempt to carry out a historic deportation campaign.
The decision by the Justice Department to charge Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan for obstruction and concealing the individual from arrest turned a spotlight on the administration’s decision to exercise immigration enforcement in certain places that have in the past been mostly off-limits to such federal activity, including courthouses, schools and places of worship.
Her arrest Friday morning immediately drew intense criticism from legal experts and Democratic lawmakers, who widely viewed it as the Trump administration’s latest bid to strong-arm courts around the country as it pushes ahead with controversial immigration policies.
“Pure intimidation – nothing more than that,” said retired federal Judge Nancy Gertner.
The Justice Department has repeatedly asserted that it will investigate any local officials who do not assist federal authorities on immigration matters. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump revived a policy from his first term that allows federal officials to make immigration-related arrests in courts.
But as in so-called sanctuary cities around the US, court officials are not obligated to work with federal officials in such arrests if the warrant being executed is an administrative warrant and not a judicial one.
Such was the case for Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, who federal officials were attempting to arrest on April 18, the day he was appearing before Dugan in a criminal matter. After learning that the officials were in possession of an administrative warrant for Flores-Ruiz, the judge allegedly helped him and his attorney leave through a nonpublic area of the courthouse. Flores-Ruiz was arrested by federal agents shortly thereafter.
“Without a (judicial) warrant, there obviously would literally be no obligation for her to cooperate. It would only happen if there was a warrant,” Jeff Swartz, a former Florida state judge, told CNN’s Brianna Keilar on “CNN News Central.” “She has no obligation to assist at all with the apprehension of that particular defendant in a civil matter.”
Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig said that it’s likely Dugan wouldn’t be facing the federal charges had she only declined to cooperate with the agents that day.
For her conduct to result in the charges she’s facing, he said, “there needs to be some affirmative act taken. And here, showing this person the back door, giving this person access to the back door, and then ushering the person out the back door would be an affirmative act.”
But Honig, a CNN legal analyst, stressed that prosecutors have to take into account a host of factors when deciding whether bringing obstruction charges are “appropriate and necessary.”
In this case, he said, there are legitimate questions about whether pursuing charges against Dugan could represent prosecutorial overreach.
Dugan’s attorney, Steven Biskupic, said in a statement later Friday that his client “has committed herself to the rule of law and the principles of due process for her entire career as a lawyer and a judge.”
“Judge Dugan will defend herself vigorously, and looks forward to being exonerated,” he added.
Dugan’s arrest is not the first time the Justice Department under Trump has accused a sitting judge of helping an undocumented immigrant evade an immigration officer.
In 2019, a Massachusetts state judge was indicted on obstruction of justice and other federal charges, which were later dropped during the Biden administration.
“I think the canary in the coal mine was the Shelley Joseph case in Massachusetts, Gertner said.
She and other experts CNN spoke with said the way that case was handled was much more measured than how the Justice Department has handled Dugan’s, underscoring the political nature of the new matter.
Gertner, for example, emphasized the fact that Dugan was arrested for a white-collar offense, while the Massachusetts judge – Shelley Richmond Joseph – was not taken into custody.
“I can’t emphasize enough how preposterous that is,” Gertner said. “This is not an individual who’s going to flee. This is not an individual who’s a threat to the community.”
The experts also pointed to the public statements Trump administration officials made touting Dugan’s case as evidence of their intention to use her prosecution for political ends.
Among those officials are Attorney General Pam Bondi, who said in an interview on Fox News after the arrest was executed that “if you are destroying evidence and you are obstructing justice, when you have victims sitting in a courtroom of domestic violence and you are escorting a criminal defendant out the back door, it will not be tolerated.”
“I think some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law, and they are not,” Bondi added.
Doug Keith, who serves as senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice’s Judiciary Program, said it’s possible that more dramatic episodes could arise as the Trump administration continues seeking widespread cooperation in its deportation campaign.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think this is the last conflict we will see like this,” Keith said.
“The policy change that ICE made around courthouse arrests on January 21 has created these circumstances in which we should expect to see chaos like this play out in more courthouses across the country,” he added.
CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz and Michael Williams contributed to this report.
