MILWAUKEE (CN) - County judges were pitted against each other on the second day of Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan's high-profile Immigration and Customs Enforcement obstruction trial.

Dugan, 66, was arrested by FBI agents in late April and indicted on charges of felony obstruction and misdemeanor concealing an individual, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, from ICE agents in early May.

Flores-Ruiz appeared in Dugan's courtroom on April 18 for a pretrial conference in an unrelated matter, where six agents from ICE, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration were waiting to detain him for entering the country illegally in 2013.

Upon learning that ICE was waiting in the hallway, Dugan recruited Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Kristela Cervera to join her in confronting the six plainclothes agents while wearing their judicial robes.

From there, the government says she returned to her own courtroom to expedite Flores-Ruiz's scheduling and usher him and his attorney out of the courtroom through a private hallway to evade the officers.

Dugan's trial kicked off on Monday, beginning with opening statements from the parties and some witness testimony from members of the arrest team about Signal chats, the private hallway and a courtroom audio recording.

On Tuesday, the second day of trial, the government called eight more witnesses who testified to additional details about the Signal chat, Dugan's demeanor during the hallway interaction with the arrest team and Cervera's involvement.  

Cervera volunteered to lead deportation Officer Joseph Vasconcellos to Chief Judge Carl Ashley's office to present the warrant for Flores-Ruiz, but she says she expected Dugan to follow them there. When she turned around to see the entire arrest team following her and not Dugan, she says she was amazed.

"I was irritated - I felt abandoned," Cervera said.

It's unusual for judges to wear their robes in the hall, but Dugan insisted they wear them, according to Cervera. Though she says now that she felt uncomfortable with this, and even embarrassed, she conceded to not having expressed that to Dugan at the time.

After the incident, Cervera recounted several interactions with attorneys who approached her to say, "Go, judge!" and "Judge, you're goated now." She said she didn't understand what they were referring to and only discovered later what had happened in Dugan's courtroom.

Cervera told the court she was humiliated: "Judges shouldn't be helping defendants evade arrest."

On cross-examination, former U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic brought out a text message that Cervera sent to her sister - a family and criminal defense attorney - warning her that ICE was in the courthouse.

The new evidence muddied the comparison that the government had attempted to draw between the two judges, especially after she admitted that it's "fair" to say she wanted to protect her sister's clients.  

Although the court heard more references to Ashley's "draft plan" on ICE in the courthouse, it's unclear when he will testify to how established this plan actually was on April 18.

The jury also heard more details about the "frozen water" Signal chat used by the arrest team. In that feed, the agents joked about an attorney who had been taking photos of them.

DEA Special Agent Brian Ayers was part of the chat and used a profile photo depicting a prescription bottle with a skull on it, situated in front of two crossed syringes with a "thin blue line" style American flag.

He indicated that the image is also the logo of the DEA's opioid task force, but the DEA did not respond to a request to confirm that claim. Another profile picture depicted a man who appeared to be licking the barrel of a gun. Other members of the group chat testified that they could not identify him, and the account was unnamed.

Though on Monday the government argued the arrest operation was going routinely until Dugan got involved, on Tuesday, Vasconcellos testified that he knew right away it was going to be "a pain in the dick" as he asserted in the Signal chat.

FBI Special Agent Phillip Jackling, Customs and Border Protection Supervisory Joseph Zuraw, Milwaukee County Deputy Sheriff Sergeant David DeSmet, assistant field office director Cassandra Kubiszewski and victim witness advocate Nile Hendrix-Whitmore also testified.

After the jury left the courtroom, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman, a Bill Clinton appointee, addressed the attorneys and Dugan about Wednesday's schedule and, in true fashion, made one last quip to end the day with a generous laugh.

"You know, when I first started out, I walked through the hallway in my robe all the time."

Source: Courthouse News Service