Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge Hannah Dugan “is under FBI investigation for allegedly helping an illegal immigrant defendant evade ICE agents who came to arrest him in her courtroom during a hearing Friday morning,” according to WISN 1130 AM talk show host Dan O’Donnell.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel confirmed, via sources, that the FBI “is looking into whether veteran Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan tried to help an undocumented immigrant avoid arrest when that person was scheduled to appear in her courtroom last week.”
Dugan, who defeated a Gov. Scott Walker appointee to take the bench, told the Journal Sentinel: “Nearly every fact regarding the ‘tips’ in your email is inaccurate.”
Wisconsin Right Now also reached out to Dugan through her courtroom. The man who answered the phone at Dugan’s courtroom number laughed audibly when asked for comment and whether the account is accurate, but said he would pass on a request for comment to Dugan, who never returned the message.
“The defendant’s attorney was made aware of the arrest and told Dugan’s clerk, who then told Dugan,” O’Donnell, who was first to break the story, alleged in a post on X.
“She allowed the defendant to hide in her jury room (which is normally off-limits to everyone except the judge and members of the jury),” he further alleged. “The ICE agents presented their warrant to Chief Judge Carl Ashley, who sent them back to Dugan’s courtroom to arrest the defendant. The FBI was notified about Dugan’s apparent obstruction of justice and is currently investigating.”
We obtained, via our own source, the email that Ashley sent out to many people in the courthouse. However, it does not mention Dugan or the most incendiary accusations.
“Colleagues, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents came into the Courthouse Complex this morning, April 18, 2025. They identified themselves when they came through security. They went to the Historic Courthouse on the sixth floor,” Ashley’s email says.
“They were asked whether they had a warrant and the agent presented the warrant as well as their identification. They were asked to go to the Chief Judge’s office. They complied. DCA Garbo and I spoke to the agents. They presented a warrant which we copied,” it continues.
“They were asked to wait until the court hearing ended. All of the agent’s actions were consistent with our draft policies, but we’re still in the process of conferring on the draft.”
The email was labeled “US Immigration and Customs Agents at the Courthouse Complex Today, April 18th.”
Wisconsin Right Now reached out to the press spokesperson for the Milwaukee FBI office in an attempt to verify O’Donnell’s account, but she declined to comment. We have also reached out to ICE for verification and comment.
We checked the court calendar for Dugan’s court for April 18 and only found one case listed, but that man is sitting in the Milwaukee County Jail and no hold is listed.
We also reached out to Ashley and haven’t heard back yet.
“In all my years of Milwaukee politics and public safety issues, working with cops, district attorneys, and judges, I have never seen a more irresponsible act by an officer of the court, let alone a judge, if true,” said state Rep. Bob Donovan, a former Milwaukee alderman, in a news release. “This borders on obstruction of justice and I hope the FBI continues a thorough investigation and, if warranted, prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.”
Dugan was first elected to the Milwaukee bench in 2016. She previously worked as a civil attorney, a litigation attorney for Legal Aid Society and Legal Action of Wisconsin, in-house counsel for Catholic Charities of Southeastern Wisconsin, Inc., and as an instructor at Marquette University, according to her LinkedIn page. She is a graduate of UW-Madison.
EXCLUSIVE: Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge Hannah Dugan is under FBI investigation for allegedly helping an illegal immigrant defendant evade ICE agents who came to arrest him in her courtroom during a hearing Friday morning.
The defendant’s attorney was made aware of the… pic.twitter.com/3BU94pm2sr
— Dan O’Donnell (@DanODonnellShow) April 22, 2025
In an email to judges explaining the incident Friday afternoon, Chief Judge Ashley “said the agents ‘identified themselves when they came through security. They went to the Historic Courthouse on the sixth floor. They were asked whether they had a warrant and the agent presented the warrant as well as their identification. All of the agents’ actions were consistent with our draft policies, but we’re still in the process of conferring on the draft,'” O’Donnell wrote.
Dugan “disputed this in an email in response to Ashley Monday morning, saying ‘a warrant was not presented in the hallway on the 6th floor,'” O’Donnell further alleged.
According to O’Donnell, another Milwaukee County Judge, Marisabel Cabrera (a former Democrat member of the Wisconsin Assembly), subsequently “indicated that she would not comply with ICE warrants, either, writing in an email to her colleagues on the Circuit Court,” allegedly writing:
“My understanding is that the warrant presented was an ICE administrative warrant. If the proposed protocol is to accept these warrants, I find it problematic. In effect, the protocol seems to merely facilitate ICE arrests in a manner that is quiet and least disruptive to us. On the other hand, the protocol gives the illusion to the general public that steps are being taken in the courthouse to prevent ICE overreach.”
She continued, according to O’Donnell: “In a time where we are seeing that ICE has made grave errors in arrests, are actively making false allegations, and blatantly violating the U.S. Constitution, I have serious concerns about publicly giving the appearance that the protocol is somehow making it safe for folks to come to court when in fact they may still be arrested by ICE and deported to a brutal detention center in El Salvador.”
