Flores Ruiz was taken into custody by USICE, DEA and FBI agents outside of the Milwaukee County Court House on April 18, according to the FBI criminal complaint affidavit against Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Dugan.
By H. Nelson Goodson
Hispanic News Network U.S.A.
April 25, 2025
Milwaukee, Wisconsin - On Friday, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah C. Dugan, 65, was taken into custody by the MAGA Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and charged with several federal felony counts for obstruction of immigration agents and concealing an individual to prevent discovery and arrest while agents attempted to serve a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (USICE) administrative warrant in the Milwaukee County Court House. The federal criminal complaint against Judge Dugan confirmed that it was a USICE administrative warrant, which means that Judge Dugan had a legal right not to comply with USICE, DEA and FBI agents attempting to arrest Eduardo Flores Ruiz, 30, inside the courthouse.
A USICE administrative warrant is signed by a agent and is not a legal judicial warrant signed by a federal judge. It actually means, a USICE administrative warrant is not legal binding to arrest someone at the courthouse including the hallways because it's County property, especially inside a courtroom.
According to the 11-page federal criminal complaint against Judge Dugan, it says that at least 6 federal agents that included USICE, DEA and FBI agents went to a court pre-trial hearing for Flores Ruiz at Judge Dugan's courtroom in an attempted to arrest Flores Ruiz for re-entering the country without authorization.
In 2013, Flores Ruiz was removed from the U.S., but had returned to the U.S. again, according to the complaint.
The criminal complaint says that Judge Dugan helped Flores Ruiz evade arrest while he was in her courtroom for a pre-trial conference hearing for three misdemeanor counts of battery including domestic abuse causing pain.
Flores Ruiz and his attorney left Judge Dugan's courtroom and the federal agents saw them leave, and afterwards Flores Ruiz was arrested outside the courthouse after a brief chase and is being held in USICE custody.
The criminal complaint alleged that Judge Dugan obstructed USICE agents in making an arrest with an administrative warrant at the courthouse, but the administrative warrant is not legal binding inside of buildings in private property, including a courthouse, since it's a Milwaukee County taxpayer property including the hallways.
Judge Dugan was released hours after her arrest and is scheduled to go before U.S. Magistrate Stephen Dries on April 25, 2025 at 10:00 a.m. at the federal courthouse in downtown Milwaukee.
Editor's note: The New York Times reported in 2022 that federal prosecutors had charged Shelley M. Richmond Joseph, a district court judge in Newton, Mass., with allowing an undocumented immigrant to sneak out the back door of a courthouse in 2018, but they later dropped the charges in an agreement.
At that time, Judge Joseph allowed an undocumented immigrant in her court to evade USICE arrest by detainer who was waiting in a hallway ready to arrest the undocumented individual, but the judge allowed him and his attorney to leave the courtroom through the back door leading to a basement with an exit. She and a court clerk were indicted in 2019. It took about 3 1/2 years to resolve the case.
Criminal complaint:
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