Politics
BREAKING: FBI Arrests Another Liberal Judge For Hiding Illegal Alien In Courthouse
A judge who allegedly helped an illegal alien evade capture has herself been arrested by federal authorities, just one week after another judge received a lifetime ban from the bench for harboring an MS-13 gang member in his own home.
Judge Hannah Dugan was cuffed by FBI agents on Friday after helping the individual “evade arrest,” according to a statement by Director Kash Patel. She is charged with knowingly misdirecting federal officers away from the illegal immigrant as he hid in the courthouse.
“The FBI arrested Judge Hannah Dugan out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on charges of obstruction — after evidence of Judge Dugan obstructing an immigration arrest operation last week,” Patel posted on X. “We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, allowing the subject — an illegal alien — to evade arrest.”
The illegal alien, Flores Ruiz, was arrested a short time later.
“Thankfully our agents chased down the perp on foot and he’s been in custody since, but the Judge’s obstruction created increased danger to the public,” Patel said.
Dugan, a Milwaukee County circuit judge in Wisconsin, is the second judge to be arrested by federal authorities under Trump.
During the president’s first term, officials with the U.S. Justice Department charged Massachusetts Judge Shelley Joseph with purposely delaying ICE agents while directing a court officer to help an illegal immigrant escape his status hearing through the back door of her courthouse. The Biden DOJ dropped Joseph’s charges in September of 2022, but the state Commission on Judicial Conduct is considering potential discipline against her, according to Masslive.
Judicial leg-ups to illegal immigrants fearing deportation have emerged as a flashpoint in the roiling debate over how or whether state and local authorities choose to assist federal agents with apprehending illegal immigrants targeted for deportation.
Joel Cano, a former judge in the New Mexico court system, resigned late last year after federal agents arrested “an illegal alien from Venezuela and a suspected member of a criminal gang” living with his daughter in a second home owned by his wife. He “can never hold a judicial office again, be a candidate for a judicial office, and cannot exercise any judicial authority in the state, including officiating at weddings,” according to a spokesman for the Administrative Office of the Courts.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is exerting more control over federal immigration judges who are key to many of the deportation proceedings he hopes to push through over the objections of civil rights advocates.
The Executive Office for Immigration Review, or EOIR, which runs the immigration court system, has fired more than two dozen immigration judges since February in locations stretching from California to Massachusetts, a move that strips the ability of many incarcerated illegal immigrants to have asylum hearings before being deported.
EOIR Acting Director Sirce E. Owen said her agency is restoring “accountability so that the Executive Branch officials answer to the President and to the people.”
“Unelected and constitutionally unaccountable (administrative law judges) have exercised immense power for far too long,” Mizelle stated to the LA Times.
