Hannah Dugan’s obstruction of justice conviction remains in place after a federal judge declined to overturn it on Tuesday in the Ice misidentified immigrant case. The ruling leaves the former Milwaukee County circuit judge facing possible sentencing after a jury found she helped Eduardo Flores-Ruiz evade immigration officers in a courtroom.
Dugan is 67 and faces up to five years in prison, though federal sentencing guidelines generally call for probation for defendants like her who have no criminal history and were convicted of a nonviolent crime. She resigned from the Milwaukee County Circuit Court two weeks after the Dec. 19 verdict.
Lynn Adelman Ruling
U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman had postponed Dugan’s sentencing on June 3 to weigh whether the conviction should be overturned. On Tuesday, he declined to do so and left the verdict standing, keeping the case on track for sentencing unless another legal step changes it.
The case has been watched as an early test of how courts would respond to Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown. For Dugan, the immediate result is that the conviction remains in force; for the court, the next step is to set a new sentencing date.
April Virginia Case
Dugan’s lawyers argued that an April federal appeals ruling in The Virginia changed the legal ground under the obstruction charge. They pointed to a key immigration case involving an immigrant detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who escaped, was recaptured and was then indicted for obstructing a pending immigration proceeding.
The appeals court found that the ICE action in that case did not amount to a pending proceeding under the federal obstruction law. Dugan’s defense said there was no pending proceeding in her courtroom either, because only a warrant had been filed for Flores-Ruiz’s arrest.
Flores-Ruiz Arrest Attempt
Adelman rejected that reading. In his written ruling, he said, “Defendant argues that ICE was acting as a law enforcement agency here.” He added, “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.”
He concluded that the attempted arrest of Flores-Ruiz counted as a pending proceeding because it was a planned and targeted operation. That left Dugan’s conviction intact and put the case back into the sentencing phase, with her punishment still to be determined under the standard range that can include probation or a prison term.
