A Wisconsin Judge Helped a Man Evade ICE. She’s Paying $5,000. He’s Already Been Deported.

A federal judge spared a former Wisconsin judge from prison this week, closing a case that turned a routine courthouse arrest into a national flashpoint over judicial independence and immigration enforcement.

U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman sentenced former Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan on July 8 to a $5,000 fine, declining to impose prison time, according to the Justice Department’s Eastern District of Wisconsin.

Dugan was convicted in December of felony obstruction for helping a defendant, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, leave her courtroom through a non-public door on April 18, 2025, as ICE agents waited outside to arrest him. A jury acquitted her of a separate charge of concealing a person from arrest.

Agents spotted Flores-Ruiz in a public hallway shortly after and arrested him following a foot chase through rain and traffic outside the courthouse, according to court records and the Justice Department. Flores-Ruiz has since been deported.

Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of 15 to 21 months, arguing Dugan abused a position of public trust and put agents, Flores-Ruiz and bystanders at unnecessary risk. Adelman found Dugan’s conduct was a departure from an otherwise law-abiding record and pointed to her decades of public service in declining to impose prison time.

Dugan resigned her judgeship in January, amid threats of impeachment from Republican state lawmakers who called her an activist judge. Her attorneys say they intend to appeal the felony conviction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

The case is one of several over the past year testing how far judges and court staff can go to shield defendants from immigration enforcement inside courthouses. A federal appeals court ruled in April, in a separate case, that obstructing an ICE arrest warrant does not necessarily amount to interference with a federal proceeding — a decision Dugan’s team is expected to lean on in her appeal.

The $5,000 fine is a rounding error against the actual cost of the case: Dugan lost a nine-year judgeship, gained a felony conviction, and became the test case in a fight over how much authority ICE holds inside the nation’s courthouses — a fight that is far from over.