Prominent Democrats are accusing President Trump of violating the law because his administration arrested Hannah Dugan, a Wisconsin judge who allegedly helped an illegal immigrant evade ICE.
U.S. Senator Cory Booker, for example, declared that “Donald Trump is waging an all-out assault” on the “rule of law” because the “FBI took the extreme and dangerous step” of “arresting a sitting judge” as part of “Trump’s playbook for punishing judges when they don’t fall in line.”
Similar statements were issued by Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer, Congressman Jamie Raskin, Senator Amy Klobuchar, and Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-declared independent socialist who caucuses with the Democrats.
In reality, the FBI’s charging document attests that multiple people witnessed Judge Dugan help an illegal immigrant avoid arrest, a potential crime under three federal laws. Two of these statutes appear on the first page of the criminal complaint, and the third was identified by Heritage Foundation legal scholar Hans von Spakovsky.
The immigrant, a Mexican citizen named Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, was deported in 2013 but snuck back into the U.S. and was slated to appear in Dugan’s courtroom on three counts of domestic violence.
The official criminal complaint against Flores-Ruiz documents that he purportedly strangled a man and punched him “in the face and body with a closed fist approximately 30 times” and struck a woman “in the forehead and arm with a closed fist before shoving her into the kitchen, causing her to fall.”
Thus, the broadsides of Booker and the other high-profile progressives bear no resemblance to the facts of this case.
Beyond those generalities, other critics of Trump have made specific allegations about this case that are at odds with the available facts.
The Legal Process
For instance, Thom Hartmann, “the nation’s #1 progressive talk show host,” reported:
Federal agents, without even having the decency of a signed warrant, stormed into Judge Hannah Dugan’s courtroom on Friday morning and dragged her away like a common criminal. No warning, no legal process, no respect for the law that she had spent a lifetime upholding.
Hartmann’s statement is deceitful on three levels:
- Dugan wasn’t arrested in her courtroom but “in the parking lot of the Milwaukee County Courthouse, before she entered the building,” according to a “senior law enforcement official” who spoke with NBC News.
- Federal warrants are not public, but U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Dries signed a criminal complaint against Dugan the day before her arrest, and neither Dugan nor her attorney has claimed that she was arrested without a signed warrant.
- Dugan appeared in court at 10:30 AM about two hours after her 8:30 arrest and was advised of her “rights,” “charges, penalties, and fines,” all of which is clear legal process.
Clarity of the Charges
A similar fiction about this case was spread by U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Dexter (D–OR), a medical doctor who claims to bring “data-driven pragmatism to her work as a lawmaker.”
While appearing on MSNBC, Dexter said that Dugan was “taken into custody without clarity of what the charges or what infraction there has been.”
To the contrary, the charging document provides 13 pages of details about Dugan’s charges and infractions.
MSNBC viewers, however, were left with the opposite impression because none of the three MSNBC hosts who were interviewing Dexter corrected her. This includes Michael Steele, Symone Sanders-Townsend, and Alicia Menendez.
Justice Not Served
In The Guardian, columnist Moira Donegan wrote that the domestic violence proceedings against Flores-Ruiz “had to be abruptly halted” because ICE attempted to arrest him, and therefore, “the victims, who were present in the courtroom, did not get their chance to see justice served.”
In fact, Judge Dugan is fully responsible for that injustice. As documented in the criminal complaint against Dugan:
- the ICE agents notified courthouse officials that they wouldn’t arrest Flores-Ruiz “until after the completion of the scheduled hearing,” and this is “standard practice.”
- when Dugan was informed that ICE was planning to arrest Flores-Ruiz, she interrupted the proceedings of another case she was hearing, confronted the ICE agents in the hallway outside her courtroom, and “ordered them to report to the Chief Judge’s office.”
- Dugan then went back into the courtroom and told Flores-Ruiz and his attorney to leave through a back door typically reserved for jury members and official business.
- Dugan’s actions baffled an attorney for the state and the state’s Victim Witness Specialist because “Flores-Ruiz’s case had not yet been called, and the victims were waiting.”
In short, The Guardian blamed ICE for the actions of Dugan, who skipped Flores-Ruiz’s hearing without notifying the state officials or the victims, wasting their time and depriving them of their day in court.
The Correct Warrant
Perhaps most importantly, Judge Dugan and others have stated that ICE didn’t have the correct type of warrant to arrest Flores-Ruiz.
As detailed in the charging document:
- Dugan asked if the ICE officer “had a judicial warrant,” and the officer replied, “No, I have an administrative warrant.”
- Dugan then asserted that the officer “needed a judicial warrant,” and the officer replied that he “was in a public space and had a valid immigration warrant.”
- Dugan then “asked to see the administrative warrant,” and the officer “offered to show it to her.”
Similarly, Wisconsin State Representative Ryan M. Clancy declared on NPR that ICE “did not have a real warrant signed by a real judge,” so Dugan “acted accordingly” and “just stood up for our community here.”
Likewise, Moira Donegan of The Guardian wrote that “Judge Dugan asked the ICE agents to leave, and pointed out that they did not have the correct warrants.”
In reality, ICE had the correct warrant. Per the federal law that governs the “apprehension and detention of aliens,” an “alien may be arrested and detained pending a decision on whether the alien is to be removed from the United States” on a “warrant issued by the Attorney General.” Because the attorney general is not a judge, this is not a judicial warrant but an administrative warrant.
In the plain words of a senior instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, “ICE enforcement functions” normally “do not involve judicially issued warrants” but “administrative removal warrants.” This gives ICE the “authority to arrest the person named in the warrant, so long as the officer locates the person in a public, non-REP [reasonable expectation of privacy], location. For example, the person is located walking down a public sidewalk.”
As the charging document explains, the “public areas of buildings such as the Milwaukee County Courthouse” are an ideal place to make such arrests because “law enforcement knows the location at which the wanted individual should be located” and the “wanted individual would have entered through a security checkpoint,” and thus, be “unarmed, minimizing the risk of injury to law enforcement, the public, and the wanted individual.”
Dugan intensified the risk of injury by helping Flores-Ruiz escape, and federal agents arrested Flores-Ruiz after he “sprinted down the street” outside the courthouse.
Dugan’s Actions
Another false statement about this matter comes from Brian Krassenstein, a businessman, social media personality, and ardent Trump critic. According to Krassenstein, the “Dugan arrest is a complete joke” because:
- “Administrative warrants don’t authorize agents to bust into private spaces like a courtroom without consent.”
- “According to the government’s own documents, after the hearing ended, Judge Dugan allegedly pointed Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer toward a non-public jury door, a back exit used by staff and jurors.”
- “Quietly telling someone, ‘Take the jury door instead,’ isn’t a crime, unless you lie, threaten, or physically block agents.”
Krassenstein’s claims are misleading in four respects:
- ICE was waiting until after the hearing to arrest Flores-Ruiz in a courthouse hallway, which is a public space, as the chief judge of the courthouse admitted.
- Multiple witnesses state that the hearing hadn’t “ended” but was skipped by Dugan without informing state officials or the victims.
- Dugan didn’t “quietly” tell Flores-Ruiz to “take the jury door” but “commanded” him to do so in a “stern” voice, using her authority as a judge.
- Dugan ordered an ICE officer and other federal agents to “leave the courthouse,” and when they refused to do so, she “demanded” that they go to the chief judge’s office, directing them away from the hallway that Flores-Ruiz used to escape after Dugan sent him through the jury door.
Therefore, Dugan’s actions arguably violate federal laws against:
- obstructing “compliance” with any legal “civil investigative demand” of federal “departments, agencies, and committees.”
- concealing a person from “discovery and arrest” under “any law of the United States” while knowing that a “warrant or process has been issued for the apprehension of such person.”
- knowingly concealing or shielding “from detection” an illegal alien “in any place, including any building or any means of transportation.”
Summary
Contrary to the claims of Democrats and progressives who are criticizing President Trump for the arrest of Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan:
- several witnesses say they saw Dugan help an illegal immigrant escape ICE, a potential crime under three federal laws.
- the illegal immigrant was charged with three counts of domestic violence and was thus a potential threat to the public.
- Dugan denied the alleged victims their day in court, wasting their time and that of the state officials who were present for the case.
- the correct warrant was issued for the arrest of the illegal immigrant, and ICE executed it in the proper manner.
- Dugan wasn’t arrested in her courtroom but in the courthouse parking lot.
- the charges against Dugan were clear, the standard legal processes were followed for her arrest.
- Dugan’s actions increased the risk of injury to federal agents, the public, and the illegal immigrant.
James D. Agresti is the president of Just Facts, a research and educational institute dedicated to publishing facts about public policies and teaching research skills.
