MILWAUKEE (CN) - Jury selection in the high-profile ICE obstruction trial of a Milwaukee judge begins Thursday despite her best efforts to have the case dismissed.

Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan, 66, is facing charges of felony obstruction and misdemeanor concealing an individual, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, from ICE agents armed with an administrative warrant.

Flores-Ruiz appeared in Dugan's courtroom on April 18 for a pretrial conference related to multiple counts of battery and domestic abuse, according to court records. When ICE agents arrived to arrest him, she left the courtroom and ordered the agents to first speak to Chief Judge Carl Ashley.  

Upon returning to her courtroom, the government says she held an off-record conference with Flores-Ruiz and his attorney to reschedule his hearing before apparently leading them through a back door into a private hallway.

Surveillance video shows Flores-Ruiz and his attorney exiting a "jury door" several feet away from the courtroom entrance into the public hallway. Plainclothes federal agents followed the pair all the way out of the courthouse before making the arrest.

One week later, Dugan was arrested by FBI agents and suspended with pay by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. By May 13, she had already been indicted by a grand jury and two days after that she entered a not guilty plea.

The parties began jury selection Thursday before U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman, a Bill Clinton appointee. Voir dire will likely continue into Friday, along with 11th-hour orders from Adelman on allowed evidence before the weekend.

Prospective jurors returned questionnaires before selection began about their party affiliation, views on immigration and opinions about Dugan's case.

Questions about water bottle and car bumper stickers - aimed at understanding their specific political views - were shot down, but the case was identified so that jurors who don't think they can be objective can be excused early.  

The trial begins Monday morning and is likely to hold the nation's attention until Christmas, given the substantial evidence in the case.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Frohling indicated he will call at least 25 witnesses over four days. This will include ICE agents involved in the April 18 incident, Flores-Ruiz's defense attorney, an unnamed attorney sitting at the defense table awaiting his client's case to be called and other courtroom witnesses.

The case will turn on intent - the government has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Dugan intended to "corruptly obstruct" ICE and "harbor and conceal" Flores-Ruiz from them.

Frohling attempted some defensive pretrial motions that would prevent Dugan or her attorneys from commenting on her "good motives" or "prior good acts" that could muddy the government's intent argument, without success.  

Adelman gave Dugan the green light on evidence regarding her "mental state" on April 18, including her motivations. This will be key for the defense, which primarily argues that Dugan was following orders given by Ashley on how to deal with ICE in the building. Ashley is expected to testify.

Dugan has maintained her innocence since her arrest and had hoped to avoid trial altogether with a bold motion to dismiss filed before she had even entered a plea, delaying trial.

In the motion, and in several filings since, Dugan argues she is entitled to judicial immunity because she was acting within her official capacity. She reframed the facts in the government's complaint as directing people's movement in and around the courtroom.

"One morning, plainclothes federal agents with badges and baseball caps on a bench outside a state courtroom decided how they wanted a judge to control that courtroom and the people in and near it. For not doing as they wished, the judge faces federal criminal charges," said Dugan's lead attorney and former U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic.  

The 37-page document details the long history of judicial immunity from both conviction and prosecution and calls this case "unprecedented and entirely unconstitutional," citing case law going as far back as the country's origin.  

Adelman denied the motion in August, opining that while Dugan was acting within her official scope, she was not protected by a "common law immunity rule as broad as the defendant suggests."

However, Adelman did concede that the judge cannot be held criminally liable for judicial acts done in good faith. Based on the facts in the indictment, her actions don't fall into the narrow exception.  

Both sides have indicated they will utilize courtroom audio from the day of the incident to give the jury a look into what the surveillance video doesn't catch, but how much of it will be admissible is still unknown as Dugan's last-minute motion to suppress most of it is awaiting a ruling.

The recording includes time she wasn't in the courtroom as well as profanities about ICE by her clerk and private conversation between an uninvolved man and his attorney.

Dugan argues that most of the recording has no probative value, but the government says that much of it shows just how abnormally Flores-Ruiz's case was handled and other contextual details that will speak to her intent.  

This case, which the defense has called an attack on the judiciary, has ignited a furious partisan battle over the judiciary's role in government and exemplified President Donald Trump's power clash with the bench.

"The decision to charge this as a crime is really unusual," said UW-Madison Professor Howard Schweber. "I read this as very much a shot across the bow from the feds to judges all over the country. Certainly, this is an attempt to intimidate judges. It's a not-at-all veiled threat."

Schweber stressed that it will be difficult to unwind the impact of Dugan's prosecution on the state judges across the country.

Schweber added that "perp walking a judge" is not par for the course, and that it was intended to shock people. Typically the government would instruct the chief judge to talk to Dugan about decorum and come up with a clear policy for future ICE arrests in the courthouse.  

Dugan's legal defense fund - managed by former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske - asserts that Dugan was shackled at the hands and ankles and made to "shuffle" to her arraignment.  

Biskupic is joined at the defense table by attorneys Nicole Masnica and Jason Luczak from Gimbel Reilly.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Eduardo-Flores-Ruiz was removed from the country on Nov. 13. He is a citizen of Mexico and has illegally entered the U.S. twice since 2013.

Flores-Ruiz, 31, left school to work with his father and brothers fishing and frog catching on Lake Patzcuaro in Michoacan, Mexico. He came to the U.S. to try to make a better living, according to court documents from his deportation proceedings.

If convicted, Dugan faces the possibility of imprisonment for up to six years and substantial fines.  

Source: Courthouse News Service