FBI Stages Courthouse Arrest of Wisconsin Judge

The federal government used brazen, heavy-handed tactics on Friday to arrest a Wisconsin state judge on obstruction charges related to an immigration case.

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan received the distinction of being arrested at her courthouse. She does not appear to have been given the opportunity to surrender to law enforcement.

Instead, Trump administration officials immediately used the arrest to create a spectacle and broadcast to the country that state officials — including sitting judges — must cooperate with the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign or else face overbearing actions from federal law enforcement.

A U.S. Marshals Service spokesman told TPM that FBI agents arrested Dugan at around 8:30 a.m. Milwaukee time. They made the arrest, Marshals spokesman Brady McCarron told TPM, as she arrived for work on the state courthouse grounds, detaining her outside of the building.

Around half an hour after, FBI Director Kash Patel posted a tweet announcing the arrest.

“We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse,” he wrote. Patel deleted the tweet minutes later, though he would later repost it.

Contrast the brazenness of Dugan’s arrest, and Patel’s efforts to manufacture publicity around it, with how a somewhat similar case proceeded during Trump’s first term. In 2019, a Massachusetts state judge was indicted on obstruction charges over allegations of blocking ICE officials from taking custody of an undocumented citizen of the Dominican Republic. In that case, itself an extremely rare federal prosecution of a state judge over a decision related to the use of her office, the defendant was allowed to surrender. The DOJ dropped the charges in September 2022.

The incident that Patel referenced took place last week, on April 18.

Federal prosecutors charged Dugan via complaint with one count of obstruction and one count of concealing an individual to prevent arrest.

Per reports from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Dugan was presiding over a pre-trial conference in the misdemeanor battery case of an undocumented Mexican citizen that morning. ICE agents appeared at the courthouse seeking to detain the person as the hearing was in progress, according to an email obtained by the newspaper. At one point, ICE agents met with the chief judge on the same floor; during that time, Dugan purportedly directed the defendant and his attorney to the public hallway on the same floor.

In an affidavit, the government described several witness reports — including that of one DEA agent who was in the courthouse but who thought Dugan may not have noticed him — to accuse the judge of drawing ICE agents away from the courtroom while directing the undocumented man to exit via a private hallway that led to the public floor area. ICE agents later arrested him after a “foot chase,” court documents said.

The story blew up from there. Dan O’Donnell, a local conservative talk radio host, first reported on Wednesday that the FBI was investigating Dugan for having “allegedly helped an illegal immigrant misdemeanor defendant, having a hearing in her courtroom, hide from ICE agents with a valid arrest warrant.”

Per the AP, Dugan appeared in court this morning and was subsequently released. Patel reposted his initial tweet after that hearing concluded.