DOJ: Judge Dugan Does Not Have Immunity for Disrupting ICE Arrest

Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested by the FBI back in April after doing her best to interfere with the arrest of illegal immigrant Eduardo Flores-Ruiz by ICE. Her attorneys have asked that her case be dismissed on the grounds that Judge Dugan has complete immunity from prosecution for official acts. In fact, her defense is citing the Supreme Court’s decision about President Trump’s immunity in their legal briefs.

Monday, the DOJ responded to that request for dismissal by arguing that Dugan’s claims aren’t supported by the law or the facts.

On Wednesday, prosecutors filed a response to her motion to dismiss, noting that “the Supreme Court has made clear that judges are not immune from criminal liability.”

“In the end, Dugan asks for this Court to develop a novel doctrine of judicial immunity from criminal prosecution, and to apply it to the facts alleged in the indictment, all without reasonable basis—directly or indirectly—in the Constitution, statutes, or case law,” prosecutors wrote. 

“In her lengthy memorandum, Dugan concedes that ‘[j]udges, like legislators and executive officials, are not above the law,’” they said.

“Dugan’s desired ruling would, in essence, say that judges are ‘above the law,’ and uniquely entitled to interfere with federal law enforcement,” prosecutors added.

Judges really do have a lot of authority to decide what happens inside their own courtroom. That’s why Dugan’s defense is claiming that the arrest team who came for Flores-Ruiz disrupted her courtroom because it puts her on pretty solid legal ground. But the DOJ response points out that it was actually Judge Dugan who was disrupting federal agents acting outside her courtroom.

The government’s filing also takes aim at Dugan’s claim that federal agents on April 18 disrupted active proceedings in her courtroom when they showed up in the courthouse seeking to arrest Flores-Ruiz on alleged immigration violations, arguing that it was Dugan “who took it upon herself to interfere with the federal agents’ performance of their responsibilities,” according to the filing.

Prosecutors allege that “Dugan chose to pause an unrelated case, leave her courtroom, disrupt proceedings in a colleague’s courtroom to commandeer her assistance, and then confront agents in the public hallway.”

The filing goes on to allege that Dugan directed agents through a set of double doors to the chief judge’s office even though she knew the chief judge was not in the office. “Dugan quickly returned to her courtroom and, among other things, directed E.F.R.’s attorney to ‘take your client out and come back and get a date’ and then to go through the jury door and ‘down the stairs’ before physically escorting E.F.R. and his attorney into a non-public hallway with access to a stairwell that led to a courthouse exit,” stated the filing, which refers to Flores-Ruiz by his initials. “She did this all just days after thanking a colleague for providing information which explained that ICE could lawfully make arrests in the courthouse hallway.”…

“Put simply, nothing in the indictment or the anticipated evidence at trial supports Dugan’s assertion that agents ‘disrupted’ the court’s docket; instead, all events arose from Dugan’s unilateral, non-judicial, and unofficial actions in obstructing a federal immigration matter over which she, as a Wisconsin state judge, had no authority,” prosecutors said in the filing.

In fact, the arrest was always planned to take place after the hearing in the public hallway, not in the courtroom, so as not to disrupt Judge Dugan’s proceedings. She knew that was the case which is why she left her courtroom.

“The trial evidence, including video footage from the public hallways, witness accounts, and audio recordings of the events which took place inside Dugan’s courtroom, will show quite the opposite: that the ‘planned’ arrest referenced in the indictment was to occur outside the defendant’s courtroom,” the filing said, “so as not to disrupt court proceedings.”

Judge Dugan’s case does not look like a strong one but you never know what might happen. The trial is currently set to start on July 21, assuming the case isn’t dismissed first. But even if it goes to trial there’s always a possibility that jury nullification could become a factor given that this will be seen by some as a chance to stick it to the Trump administration.

I’ve posted this before, but here’s the video from inside the courthouse showing what happened.