MILWAUKEE (CN) - Former Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan was fined $5,000 Wednesday for attempting to help a man living in the country illegally evade immigration officers outside her courtroom.

U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman, a Bill Clinton appointee, was unconvinced by Dugan's last-chance appeal in June based on a Fourth Circuit opinion that she said redefined a "pending proceeding" under the law, warranting a new trial.

Dugan had previously asked the court for a new trial and acquittal in January, arguing that her actions in April 2025 fell within her judicial duties and that she cannot be punished for discretionary official acts.

On Wednesday, Dugan finally faced sentencing after several months of appeals.

The judge was convicted of obstructing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers but acquitted on the lesser charge of concealing an individual set for deportation following a weeklong trial just before Christmas. She faced up to five years in jail for a felony obstruction conviction.

In April 2025, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz appeared before Dugan for a hearing in an unrelated case. Six agents from ICE, FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration were waiting outside the courtroom to arrest him for entering the country illegally in 2013.

Upon learning that immigration officers were waiting in the public hallway, Dugan left the bench to confront them. She directed five plainclothes officers to Chief Judge Carl Ashley's office at the end of the hall, then returned to her courtroom.

She can be heard on courtroom audio recordings quickly rescheduling Flores-Ruiz's case and ushering him and his attorney out of the room through the jury door to a hallway with two possible exits: a private staircase and a door to the public hallway where agents awaited.

The defense maintained throughout the trial that, had Dugan intended to help Flores-Ruiz escape, she would have led him to the staircase where he could have slipped away.

Federal prosecutors say that is what she intended, but that he misunderstood her instructions. He exited into the public hallway and was arrested after a short foot chase.

No evidence was presented to show Dugan knew who the agents were there to arrest, nor that she ever saw the warrant. In fact, her defense team argued that she was simply following the policy that was being drafted by the chief judge to deal with these very situations.

Dugan resigned from the bench in January to focus on her case.

The case was shaken up after a Fourth Circuit ruling in United States v. Hernandez seemed to suggest that executing an ICE administrative warrant is pure police action falling under the exception of the felony obstruction law.

In a final hour motion for reconsideration, Dugan argued the opinion requires a retrial in her own case because the agents waiting for Flores-Ruiz had only an administrative warrant, falling under the newly defined exception to the law.

Adelman accused Dugan of oversimplifying Hernandez and ignoring glaring differences between the two cases in his order denying her motion.

"Reading Hernandez more broadly - to exclude all ICE enforcement and removal operations, regardless of the stage, from [the obstruction law] - cannot be reconciled with the plain language of the statute or the existing case law," Adelman said.

He suggested the Seventh Circuit could eventually pare back its obstruction case law based on the Fourth Circuit case, which was a matter of first impression, but he will not anticipate such change.

In Hernandez, a final order for removal had already been issued when immigration agents detained him whereas the arrest of Flores-Ruiz was part of ICE's investigation into whether he had violated federal law by returning to the U.S. without permission.

Since no final order of removal for Flores-Ruiz had been ordered, Dugan's obstructive conduct was fully covered by the law under which Dugan was convicted, according to Adelman.

Dugan's own attorneys have maintained that the charges amounted to political persecution, and the case has drawn national attention as part of President Donald Trump's ongoing battle with the judiciary.

Source: Courthouse News Service