A federal judge has refused to overturn the obstruction conviction of former Wisconsin circuit court judge Hannah Dugan, who was found guilty of helping an undocumented man evade immigration agents at her courthouse. The ruling keeps Dugan’s felony conviction intact and moves her closer to sentencing, though she is unlikely to serve prison time.
The verdict and what the judge decided
On Tuesday, US District Judge Lynn Adelman declined to grant Dugan’s motions for a new trial or reversal of her conviction. Adelman had previously postponed sentencing to consider whether the conviction should be overturned but ultimately ruled that it would stand. No new sentencing date was immediately set.
Dugan’s legal team pushed back sharply. “The court’s decision is wrong,” her defense said in a statement, per AP News.
A federal jury had convicted Dugan on December 19 of felony obstruction of federal agents. She was acquitted of a lesser misdemeanor charge of concealing a person from federal law enforcement. Flores-Ruiz is currently in federal custody awaiting deportation to Mexico, per WAOW.
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What led to Dugan’s arrest
The case stemmed from an incident on April 18, 2025, when immigration officers went to the Milwaukee County courthouse after learning that Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, an undocumented man who had previously been deported during the Obama administration in 2013 had re-entered the country illegally and was scheduled to appear before Dugan on a state battery case. Flores-Ruiz had pleaded no contest to three counts of misdemeanor battery with domestic abuse modifiers, per WAOW.
Dugan confronted the ICE agents outside her courtroom, telling them their administrative warrant was not sufficient to arrest Flores-Ruiz and directed them to the chief judge’s office. After the agents left, she led Flores-Ruiz and his attorney out through a private jury door, a nonpublic exit while federal agents waited in the hallway. Agents spotted Flores-Ruiz in a corridor, followed him outside and arrested him after a foot chase. A week later, FBI agents arrested Dugan at the courthouse and led her out in handcuffs, per AP News.
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Why the judge refused to overturn Dugan’s conviction
Dugan’s attorneys argued her conviction should be thrown out based on a federal appeals court ruling in a separate Virginia immigration case, which found that an ICE action did not constitute a “pending proceeding” under federal obstruction law. They argued no such pending proceeding existed against Flores-Ruiz, only a warrant for his arrest.
Judge Adelman disagreed, ruling that the attempted arrest did count as a pending proceeding because it was a planned and targeted operation rather than a random encounter. “Defendant argues that ICE was acting as a law enforcement agency here,” Adelman wrote, per AP News. “But this ignores the fact that, unlike, say, the FBI, ICE can issue its own warrants and adjudicate and effectuate a removal, as it did with Flores-Ruiz, without the involvement of a court. This makes a difference.”
Dugan who is 67, faces up to five years in prison but is widely expected to receive probation given her clean record and nonviolent conviction. She resigned from her judgeship two weeks after her conviction amid Republican impeachment threats, per AP News.