A federal court has handed down a sentence that spares former Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan from any prison time, one year after she was convicted of obstructing a federal proceeding related to her actions helping an undocumented immigrant evade U.S. immigration agents at her Wisconsin courthouse.
The 2025 incident sparked intense partisan friction across the state, becoming a rallying point for conservative critics of loose immigration enforcement who framed Dugan’s actions as proof of a deeply politicized liberal judiciary. On Wednesday, District Judge Lynn Adelman ruled that a $5,000 fine was sufficient punishment for the 65-year-old former jurist, concluding that custodial sentence was unnecessary to meet the legal goals of sentencing. Adelman noted that Dugan, who built a nine-year career on the bench and resigned amid impeachment pressure from Wisconsin’s Republican leadership, had compiled a long record of positive service to the Milwaukee community.
Dugan’s legal troubles date back to April 18, 2025, when Mexican national Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, who faced misdemeanor battery charges, appeared for a scheduled hearing at her courtroom. Six law enforcement officers from the FBI, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the Drug Enforcement Agency were present at the courthouse to take Flores-Ruiz into federal custody. Per an FBI affidavit, Dugan reacted with open anger to the terms of the arrest warrant and ordered the federal agents to report to the office of the court’s chief judge. While the officers waited, Dugan directed Flores-Ruiz and his defense attorney to a private side exit typically reserved for jury members, in an attempt to help him avoid detention. The attempt was ultimately unsuccessful: immigration agents intercepted the pair shortly after they left the courtroom, and Flores-Ruiz was later deported from the U.S.
Dugan was taken into custody two weeks after the incident, a development that was celebrated by allies of the Trump administration, who had cited her actions as evidence of Democratic-aligned judges undermining federal immigration policy. In December 2025, a jury found her guilty of obstructing a criminal proceeding, but acquitted her on a second charge of concealing a person from arrest. She had already resigned from her judicial post earlier that year, as Wisconsin Republicans moved forward with impeachment proceedings against her.
Ahead of Wednesday’s sentencing, Dugan addressed the court for the first time after choosing not to testify during her trial. She pushed back against the polarized framing of her actions that has dominated public discussion of the case, noting she has been labeled both a lawless rogue and a hero to immigration advocates. “I am neither. I am a public servant who was just trying to do my job,” she told the court. Dugan added that her actions on the day of the incident aligned with longstanding court administrative policies and community priorities for the Milwaukee courthouse, and that she had never acted with malicious intent.
Dugan faced a maximum possible sentence of five years in federal prison for the obstruction conviction. Her legal team had already announced plans to appeal the conviction ahead of the sentencing hearing, and had urged the court to impose a lenient sentence, pointing to her decades of public service that ended abruptly with her arrest in 2025.