Courthouse footage spells trouble for Wisconsin judge accused of helping illegal alien evade ICE
A Republican congressman demanded Hannah Dugan's ouster after seeing the footage.
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was indicted by a federal grand jury last week on charges of concealing a person from arrest and obstruction of the law.
Dugan, relieved of her duties as a judge last month by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, could land up to six years in prison if convicted for allegedly helping Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, an illegal alien from Mexico charged with three misdemeanor counts of battery, get away from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Judging from the courthouse footage recently obtained from Milwaukee County by WISN-TV through an open records request, her defense has its work cut out.
The federal indictment alleges that Dugan committed multiple "affirmative acts" to assist Flores-Ruiz evade arrest following his pre-trial April 18 appearance in her courtroom, including:
- confronting members of an ICE task force and "falsely telling them they needed a judicial warrant to effectuate the arrest of E.F.R.";
- directing all members of the task force to leave the public hallway outside her courtroom and to go to the chief judge's office;
- addressing the illegal alien's criminal case off the record while ICE agents were waiting in the chief judge's office;
- "directing E.F.R. and his counsel to exit Courtroom 615 through a non-public jury door"; and
- advising Flores-Ruiz's lawyer that the illegal alien could appear by Zoom for his next court date.
The original FBI charging document goes into far more detail, drawing on witness testimony and other inputs.
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