Lee Matz/Milwaukee Independent/AP Photo
When Donald Trump was criminally indicted in Manhattan in 2023, he was given a courtesy that’s not the norm for the many New Yorkers accused of crimes on any given day: He was given a heads-up about the charges against him and told to appear in court for his arraignment, without the need to arrest him and bring him before the judge. As a former president, the first in history to be indicted, he was neither a flight risk nor a danger to public safety, the thinking went. There was no need for the public spectacle, or ridicule, of him facing the criminal system like just about everyone else.
The Trump administration gave no such courtesy to Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan on Friday. She was arrested at the courthouse where she works, over FBI allegations, not yet approved by a federal grand jury, that she obstructed the functions of ICE by concealing a person the agency wanted to arrest while that person, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, was in Dugan’s courtroom facing her in an unrelated domestic violence matter. According to the FBI, the judge allowed the man, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, to exit her courtroom through a side door near the jury box to a nonpublic area that then led to a public area of the courthouse.
Minutes after the judge’s arrest, Kash Patel, a former public defender and now the FBI director, was so ebullient about the charges that he posted about it on X, as one does in highly sensitive cases, and then deleted it before posting it again shortly after noon. Did he get a talking to from Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is above him in the chain of command at the Trump Justice Department and perhaps wanted to be the first one to confirm the news?
By 1 p.m., the attorney general was already on Fox News trumpeting Dugan’s arrest. “That’s her picture up on the screen. Hannah Dugan, who is now in custody,” Bondi said. “Shame on her. It was a domestic violence case of all cases. And she’s protecting a criminal defendant over victims of crime.” She later told ABC News: “Nobody is above the law. Not even a judge.”
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, during a brief hearing in federal court, Dugan said nothing but her defense lawyer did: “Judge Dugan wholeheartedly regrets and protests her arrest. It was not made in the interest of public safety.”
Indeed, a close reading of the 13-page affidavit supporting the criminal complaint, which notes that Dugan “became visibly angry” when she learned of ICE’s presence at the courthouse last week — a turn of events she called “absurd” — reveals the true import of this circus: None of it made anyone any safer. As a matter of basic federalism, which Republicans and conservatives have long embraced, armed federal agents from ICE, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration shouldn’t be roaming around a state courthouse looking for people who are there for other reasons.
We’ve been here before. In 2018, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Massachusetts shocked the state when he secured an indictment against a sitting judge, Shelley Richmond Joseph, over circumstances remarkably similar to those that led to Dugan’s arrest. One key difference: Joseph was not noisily arrested, and her charges were ultimately dismissed when she agreed to allow a state judicial ethics panel to handle her case.
But the real original sin is the policy of conducting ICE arrests at courthouses. During the first Trump administration, the federal government broke with tradition when ICE began showing up at courthouses to conduct its enforcement operations, alarming judges, advocates, and community members who have long viewed courthouses as off limits for immigration-related arrests.
These kinds of tactics hamper the court system in other ways: victims and witnesses with immigrant backgrounds become fearful and unwilling to come to court when their presence and participation is essential in cases that have nothing to do with criminal law — such as family court, landlord-tenant disputes, or a civil lawsuit accusing an employer of wage theft. District attorneys, public defenders, and court personnel can’t do their jobs properly. “Sending armed FBI and ICE agents into buildings like this will intimidate individuals showing up to court to pay fines, to deal with whatever court proceedings they may have,” one advocate protesting Dugan’s arrest said on Friday.
And many judges hate the practice, too. “We know that judges simply cannot do their jobs and our justice system cannot function effectively if victims, defendants, witnesses, and family members do not feel secure in accessing the courthouse,” wrote a group of retired federal and state judges to ICE in 2018. Their ask at the time: to treat courthouses as “sensitive locations,” just like hospitals, schools, or places of worship. In the absence of federal action, as the Brennan Center for Justice has documented, many state legislatures and state court systems took matters into their own hands to try to bar ICE from public spaces at or near courthouses.
In 2021, the Biden administration returned the status quo to what it was pre-2017, but the Trump administration immediately reversed course as soon as Trump was back in office. That has once again led to the predictable chaos playing out in Wisconsin — where a judge with a long track record in the community now stands accused of federal crimes. There and elsewhere, the chilling effect on future court operations will be unavoidable. Coupled with the Trump Justice Department’s stated policy of going after state and local officials who don’t fall in line with the administration’s immigration crackdown, Dugan’s arrest may just be the tip of the spear in our new federalism. (Under the Tenth Amendment, the federal government cannot strongarm states to follow its every wish on immigration.)
The Associated Press noted how this political prosecution is already impacting court operations. “A sign that remained posted on Dugan’s courtroom door Friday advised that if any attorney or other court official ‘knows or believes that a person feels unsafe coming to the courthouse to courtroom 615,’ they should notify the clerk and request an appearance via Zoom.”
