Judge Dugan Convicted Over a Courthouse Side Door

CASE FILE AT A GLANCE
Judge	Hannah C. Dugan
Court	Milwaukee County Circuit Court, Branch 31, Wisconsin
On the Bench	Elected 2016, took office August 1, 2016; reelected unopposed 2022; resigned January 3, 2026
Conduct	April 18, 2025, at the Milwaukee County Courthouse
Charges	18 U.S.C. 1505 (obstructing a proceeding before a department or agency) and 18 U.S.C. 1071 (concealing a person from arrest)
Verdict	December 18, 2025: guilty on the 1505 count, not guilty on the 1071 count
Sentence	July 8, 2026: $5,000 fine, time served, no imprisonment and no probation, plus the $100 special assessment. The guidelines range was 15 to 20 months and the statutory maximum five years
Trial Judge	U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman, E.D. Wis., No. 2:25-cr-00089
Judicial Discipline	None. Relieved of duties April 29, 2025 for the duration of the case; resigned before any determination
Status	On appeal, Seventh Circuit No. 26-2440, docketed July 9, 2026

What Happened on April 18

Immigration agents came to the public hallway outside Dugan’s courtroom to arrest a man scheduled on her misdemeanor calendar that morning. They told her they had an administrative warrant. She told them an administrative warrant was not a judicial warrant and sent them to the chief judge’s office. The man is referred to here by role only; he was later deported after resolving the state charge.

After the agents left the hallway, she returned to the bench, took his case up off the record, and directed him and his lawyer out through a door that led to a nonpublic corridor rather than the public gallery. Agents spotted him outside and arrested him after a brief chase. The government’s evidence at trial included testimony that she said, of the decision to move him, “I’ll do it. I’ll get the heat.” Her defense was that she was managing her own courtroom and keeping an arrest operation out of it, which is what a presiding judge is supposed to do.

The FBI arrested her a week later. A grand jury indicted her on May 13, 2025. One hundred thirty-eight retired judges filed a brief supporting her motion to dismiss. Judge Adelman denied that motion on August 26, 2025, and the case went to a four-day trial in December.

Why the Obstruction Count Fit and the Concealment Count Did Not

The split verdict is the legally interesting part. Section 1071 punishes harboring or concealing a person to prevent his discovery and arrest. The jury said no. Whatever she did, she did it in open court, in front of the agents, her clerk, her reporter and a gallery, and then the man walked out of the building on his own. That is not concealment.

Section 1505 is the broader statute, and it is the one that caught her. It punishes corruptly obstructing or impeding a pending proceeding before a federal department or agency, which the court held includes a Department of Homeland Security immigration proceeding. Three features of that statute did the work. “Corruptly” means acting with an improper purpose, so otherwise lawful acts can become criminal when the motive is wrong. There is no materiality requirement, so it did not matter that the arrest happened anyway. And the required link between the conduct and the proceeding is a nexus, which the court found the jury instructions properly captured.

After trial she moved for acquittal and a new trial, arguing the statute had been stretched past its purpose. Judge Adelman denied both on April 6, 2026, distinguishing the Supreme Court’s narrowing decisions in Fischer and Marinello on the ground that section 1505 contains a single obstruction provision rather than a residual clause attached to a list, and relying on Seventh Circuit authority reading “proceeding” broadly.

No Criminal Immunity for Judges

Her central pretrial argument was judicial immunity, and it failed on a distinction worth holding onto: “there is no general rule of criminal immunity for judges.” Judges have absolute immunity from civil damages suits for their judicial acts, which is why a litigant cannot sue a judge over a ruling. That is not the same as immunity from prosecution, and the court held that conduct does not become immune simply because it happened on the bench and looked like courtroom management.

Her Tenth Amendment argument, that the federal government cannot commandeer a state judge into assisting immigration enforcement, also failed as a defense to the charge. The court’s view was that she was not prosecuted for declining to help; she was prosecuted for acting to impede.

The Privilege She Could Not Invoke

She also raised the old common-law privilege that protects parties and witnesses from civil arrest while they are attending court, which exists so that people are not deterred from showing up. The court rejected it twice over. It was waived, because she had not raised it in her pretrial motion when the facts were already available. And she had no standing to assert it, because the privilege belongs to the person facing arrest rather than to the judge, and she cited no authority for asserting it on his behalf.

Whether the privilege reaches civil immigration arrests at all remains unsettled. The only federal appellate court to address it, the First Circuit, held that it does not. Judge Adelman noted that holding and did not decide the question himself. So the doctrine that would have made this conduct lawful is both unresolved and, on this record, not hers to raise.

The Same Facts, a Different Ending

The series already has this case, with the opposite outcome. In Case File No. 48, a Massachusetts district court judge faced a federal indictment over a 2018 courtroom episode in which a defendant left through a back exit while an immigration officer waited out front. Federal prosecutors dropped that indictment in 2022. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court then publicly reprimanded her in September 2026, and it expressly found she had not known of or authorized the back-door exit. Her violations were an appearance of impropriety and telling the clerk to go off the record. She is back on the bench.

Set them side by side and the difference is not the conduct, it is who finished the case. Where the prosecution was abandoned, a judicial-conduct commission took over, made narrow findings, and imposed the mildest public sanction available. Where the prosecution went to verdict, there was never any judicial-conduct proceeding at all, and the judge left the bench with a felony conviction instead of a disciplinary record. Two judges, nearly the same courthouse problem, and the forum decided almost everything about the consequence.

One detail connects them beyond the facts. The appellate decision rejecting the courthouse-arrest privilege for civil immigration arrests came out of the First Circuit, which is the Massachusetts case’s own circuit. The law that failed Dugan in Wisconsin was made where Case File No. 48 happened.

Three Tracks, Three Outcomes

Track	Where It Ended
Federal criminal case	Convicted December 18, 2025 on the section 1505 count, acquitted on the section 1071 count. Sentenced July 8, 2026 to a $5,000 fine, no prison, no probation. On appeal in the Seventh Circuit, No. 26-2440.
Judicial discipline	Never adjudicated. The Wisconsin Supreme Court relieved her of judicial duties on April 29, 2025 for the duration of the federal case, which is a temporary measure and not a finding of misconduct. She resigned January 3, 2026, ending the possibility of a determination.
Law license	Open. The Office of Lawyer Regulation moved on July 21, 2026 for a summary suspension based on a conviction of a serious crime. On September 16, 2026 the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined, holding that summary suspension was not warranted on these facts, with two justices dissenting. Lawyer discipline proceeds separately from here.

How It Works in Texas

Government Code chapter 752, added by Senate Bill 4 in 2017, bars a local entity from adopting or enforcing a policy that materially limits immigration enforcement, and section 752.053(b) bars such an entity from prohibiting its covered personnel, a list that includes magistrates, from assisting or cooperating with a federal immigration officer. Read it closely, though, and it constrains the entity’s policies, not an individual judge’s conduct in a particular case. A county that adopted a no-cooperation rule would be the violator. For the Texas judicial discipline process itself, see our explainer, Who Polices Texas Judges? The SCJC Explained.

Penal Code section 38.05, hindering apprehension, requires intent to hinder arrest or prosecution for an offense, and a civil immigration arrest on an administrative warrant is not an arrest for an offense. Section 38.15, interference with public duties, protects peace officers performing a legal duty, carries an express defense when the interference is speech only, and is a Class B misdemeanor. Neither was built for this. The statute that reached Dugan was federal, and it would reach a Texas judge the same way, because section 1505 turns on a proceeding before a federal agency rather than on anything in Texas law.

On the judicial-conduct side, the fit is closer. Texas Canon 2A requires a judge to comply with the law and to act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary, and Canon 2B forbids lending the prestige of judicial office to advance the private interests of others. A Texas judge who used the mechanics of her own courtroom to resolve one person’s problem would be answering under both, whatever happened on the criminal side.

Texas does recognize the courthouse-attendance privilege, but in one narrow place. Code of Criminal Procedure article 24.28, the uniform act for out-of-state witnesses, provides in its fifth section that a witness who comes into Texas or passes through under a summons shall not be subject to arrest or the service of process, civil or criminal, for matters that arose before entering the state. That protects a summoned out-of-state witness. It does not protect a defendant appearing on his own Texas case, which is the situation that actually arises.

If Immigration Agents Come to Your Client’s Hearing

Know which document you are looking at. An administrative warrant is issued by an immigration officer, not a judge, and it is a civil document. A judicial warrant is signed by a judge on a finding of probable cause. The difference drives what agents may do and where they may go, and it is the first thing to establish on the record.

Public hallway, nonpublic space. Courthouse hallways and galleries are generally public. Chambers, jury rooms, staff corridors and holding areas are not. An administrative warrant does not by itself authorize entry into nonpublic space without consent.

Ask the court to put the encounter on the record, and keep it there. The off-the-record decision is what drew a finding against the Massachusetts judge in Case File No. 48, and in this case the absence of a record left the judge’s own account competing with the agents’. A clean transcript protects everyone in the room, including the judge.

The privilege argument belongs to your client, not the judge. If you think the common-law protection against civil arrest applies, raise it yourself, early, and in writing. It was held waived here because it came too late, and unavailable because the wrong person raised it.

Where Things Stand Now

The conviction is not final. The appeal was docketed in the Seventh Circuit on July 9, 2026, the day after sentencing, as No. 26-2440. Her appellate team is led by Paul Clement, and the issues flagged are the ones she lost below: judicial immunity, whether section 1505 was stretched beyond its proper scope, and the jury instructions. Reporting at the time of the notice expected briefing through the fall with argument and a decision running into 2027.

Three things are already settled whatever the Seventh Circuit does. She is not a judge, because she resigned rather than being removed, which means no judicial-conduct body ever made a finding about her conduct. She still has her law license, because the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to suspend it summarily. And by at least one account this is the first federal conviction of a state judge for obstructing immigration enforcement, which is why the appeal matters well beyond Milwaukee: a ruling either way will tell every state trial judge in the country where the line sits between managing a courtroom and obstructing a federal agency.

Facing the System in Texas? Courthouse rules, warrants and who may act on them are not academic when it is your hearing. Deandra Grant Law handles federal and state criminal defense in Texas. Call (214) 225-7117 • texasdwisite.com

Sources

PRIMARY SOURCE

• United States v. Dugan, No. 25-CR-89 (E.D. Wis.), Decision and Order of Judge Lynn Adelman dated April 6, 2026, denying the Rule 29 motion for judgment of acquittal and the Rule 33 motion for a new trial. This is the source for the holdings on criminal immunity, the scope of section 1505, and the common-law privilege. court decision (pdf)
• U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Wisconsin: Former Milwaukee County Judge Sentenced for Obstruction (July 8, 2026). justice.gov
• Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse case page for United States v. Dugan, 2:25-cr-00089 (E.D. Wis.), with the counts, the verdict on each count, the judgment and the notice of appeal. clearinghouse.net
• United States v. Hannah Dugan, Seventh Circuit No. 26-2440, docketed July 9, 2026, on appeal from the Eastern District of Wisconsin. courtlistener.com

NEWS COVERAGE

• Wisconsin Examiner: Wisconsin Supreme Court suspends Judge Hannah Dugan after federal charges (Apr. 29, 2025). wisconsinexaminer.com
• JURIST: Wisconsin judge convicted of felony obstruction for interference in ICE arrest (Dec. 2025), including the characterization of this as the first such federal conviction of a state judge. jurist.org
• WTMJ: Former Milwaukee County Judge Dugan sentenced, will not face prison time (July 8, 2026). wtmj.com
• Wisconsin Law Journal: Dugan appeal could stretch into 2027 (July 9, 2026), for the appellate issues, counsel and expected timeline. wislawjournal.com
• Wisconsin Examiner: Wisconsin Supreme Court votes not to suspend law license of former Judge Hannah Dugan (Sept. 17, 2026). wisconsinexaminer.com

REFERENCE

• Texas Government Code section 752.053, policies and actions regarding immigration enforcement, added by S.B. 4 (2017). texas.public.law
• Texas Penal Code section 38.05, hindering apprehension or prosecution. texas.public.law
• Texas Penal Code section 38.15, interference with public duties. texas.public.law
• Texas Code of Criminal Procedure article 24.28, uniform act to secure the attendance of witnesses from without the state, section 5 on exemption from arrest and service of process. statutes.capitol.texas.gov
• Texas Code of Judicial Conduct, Canon 2. law.uh.edu
• Deandra Grant Law: Who Polices Texas Judges? The SCJC Explained. texasdwisite.com

This post summarizes a federal criminal record, a state court’s administrative orders and news reporting for general informational purposes as of publication. It is not legal advice. The conviction is on appeal and is not final. No judicial-conduct body has made any finding about Judge Dugan’s conduct; she resigned before any such proceeding occurred, and the April 2025 order relieving her of her duties was a temporary measure rather than a determination of misconduct. She was acquitted of the concealment count. This post takes no position on immigration policy, on the decision to bring this prosecution, or on how the appeal should come out. The man who appeared before her, the agents, the court staff and the chief judge are referred to by role and are not named; he is accused of no wrongdoing in connection with the judge’s case.