Bipartisan group of judges criticizes Milwaukee judge’s arrest in letter to AG

A bipartisan group of 150 former federal and state judges criticized the FBI’s arrest of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan late last month in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. 

The letter, sent on Monday, takes issue with the way federal officials publicized Dugan’s arrest and used it in an attempt to intimidate the judiciary system across the country.

Dugan was arrested and charged with two federal crimes after she directed Eduardo Flores-Ruiz — a 30-year-old Mexican immigrant who appeared in Dugan’s courtroom on misdemeanor battery charges —  to use a side exit when a group of federal agents came to arrest him as part of an immigration enforcement action. 

Dugan herself was arrested a week after Flores-Ruiz, accused of impeding the federal agents. Trump administration l officials quickly drew attention to Dugan’s arrest outside the court. FBI Director Kash Patel posted about the arrest on X and later posted a photo of Dugan in handcuffs being walked out of the Milwaukee County Courthouse. Bondi appeared on cable news to call judges who resist the Trump administration “deranged.”

bondi-letter

The letter states that if Dugan’s case were an emergency she would have been arrested sooner, and since it wasn’t an emergency she didn’t need to be “perp walked” out of the courthouse. She could have been issued a summons to appear before a federal judge, which is common practice in other white-collar criminal cases, according to the letter. 

“The circumstances of Judge Dugan’s arrest make it clear that it was nothing but an effort to threaten and intimidate the state and federal judiciaries into submitting to the Administration, instead of interpreting the Constitution and laws of the United States,” the letter states. “This cynical effort undermines the rule of law and destroys the trust the American people have in the nation’s judges to administer justice in the courtrooms and in the halls of justice across the land.”

Retired Wisconsin Supreme Court Judge Janine Geske is among the letter’s signers.