Overview

Born in 1959, Hannah C. Dugan earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Legal Studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1981; a Master’s degree in American Studies from Boston College; and a Juris Doctor from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1987.

After completing her legal education, Dugan worked from 1987-1994 as a litigation attorney, supervising attorney, and law firm administrator at Legal Action of Wisconsin, a nonprofit entity that provided free civil legal services to low-income individuals in south and central Wisconsin.

From 1994-2005, she was a litigation attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee, another nonprofit that offered free civil legal services to low-income residents of Milwaukee County.

From January 1993 to May 2006, Dugan served variously as a Clinical Supervisor, Adjunct Assistant Professor, and Visiting Professor (of Law) at Marquette University and Seattle University.

From 1999 to 2000, she was president of the Milwaukee Bar Association.

In 2003, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Milwaukee appointed Dugan to serve on a board that assessed complaints accusing members of the Catholic clergy of sexual abuse.

From  January 2006 to December 2009, Dugan held such titles as Executive Director, Foundation Executive Director, Director of Programs, and In-house Counsel for Catholic Charities of Southeastern Wisconsin, a member organization of Catholic Charities USA. According to InfluenceWatch.org, “Catholic Charities USA supports mostly left-of-center welfare expansionist political policies, including government-subsidized housing, government subsidies and tax credits for families, universal pre-K education, expansion of food stamps, expanded Medicare, liberal immigration policies, and the permanent establishment of the Universal Charitable Deduction.”

From July 2010 to July 2016, Duganheaded her own Milwaukee-based civil law firm, known as the Law Offices of Hannah C. Dugan, LLC.

For approximately three months in 2013, Dugan served as Interim Director of Milwaukee’s Social Development Commission, an anti-poverty agency that was Milwaukee County’s largest Head Start provider. Moreover, she once served a stint on the board of the now-defunct Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee.

Dugan was elected to a six-year term as a judge with the Milwaukee County Circuit Court in 2016, and was reelected in 2022.

Helping an Illegal Alien Evade Immigration Authorities

Dugan became embroiled in a major controversy starting on April 18, 2025, when the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency issued an arrest warrant for Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a 30-year-old illegal migrant from Mexico, for charges of battery and domestic abuse. Notably, he had already compiled a long criminal record of offenses that included not only prior instances of those same two crimes, but also such depravities as strangulation and suffocation.

Flores-Ruiz had first entered the United States in 2013 when he illegally crossed America’s southern border, only to be quickly apprehended by Border Patrol agents in Arizona and deported back to his native Mexico. But he then returned to the U.S. just a few days later and settled in Milwaukee. There, he worked mostly in restaurants for the next 12 years — until the battery and domestic abuse charges of April 2025 brought him into the public eye. He was scheduled to appear in Judge Dugan’s court to face the battery and domestic abuse charges on the night of April 18, 2025.

Prior to January 21, 2025, federal policy had barred ICE personnel from making routine arrests inside a courthouse. But that changed when the incoming Trump administration issued a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) directive titled “Enforcement Actions in or Near Protected Areas,” while ICE brought forth an interim guidance permitting its agents to “conduct civil immigration enforcement actions in or near courthouses when they have credible information that leads them to believe the targeted alien(s) is or will be present at a specific location, and where such action is not precluded by laws imposed by the jurisdiction in which the civil immigration enforcement action will take place.”

On the evening of April 18, Judge Dugan, according to observers, became “visibly upset” and adopted “a confrontational, angry demeanor” upon learning that ICE agents were stationed outside her courtroom, waiting for an opportunity to arrest Flores-Ruiz.  When she approached those agents and asked them whether they had obtained a judicial warrant for the man’s arrest, they replied that they had an administrative warrant. In response, Dugan told the agents that in order to arrest Flores-Ruiz, they would need a judicial warrant, and she then returned to her courtroom. MotionLaw.com explains the difference between the two types of warrants:

“A judicial warrant is an official court order signed by a judge or magistrate that authorizes a search of private property, seizure, or arrest based on probable cause that a crime is being committed or has been committed…. An ICE administrative warrant is a document, issued by a federal agency such as Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), purporting to document their authority to arrest a person suspected of violating immigration laws. These administrative documents are not signed by a neutral magistrate or judge but rather an immigration officer like an ICE agent or immigration judge.”

Once she was back inside her courtroom, Judge Dugan promptly terminated Flores-Ruiz’s hearing and told him it could be rescheduled for some future date as a Zoom conference, so as to avoid any additional ICE involvement. Dugan then directed the defendant and his attorney to quietly slip out of the court area by way of a jury-room exit that led into a non-public section of the building. According to an FBI affidavit, such a course of action was highly unusual, as “only deputies, juries, court staff, and in-custody defendants being escorted by deputies used the back jury door. Defense attorneys and defendants who were not in custody never used the jury door.” When Flores-Ruiz arrived outside the courthouse and began to leave the scene, some ICE agents spotted him, chased him, and arrested him nearby.

Investigation, Arrest, Trial, Conviction, & Resignation

The FBI subsequently launched an investigation into whether Judge Dugan had illegally helped Eduardo Flores-Ruiz avoid apprehension at the courthouse. On April 25, 2025, FBI agents arrested the judge and charged her with two criminal counts: (a) “obstructing and impeding a proceeding before a department or agency of the United States,” a felony, and (b) “concealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest,” a midemeanor. The two charges together carried a maximum penalty of six years in prison, as well as a potential $350,000 fine. After a brief jailing, Dugan was released on her own recognizance later that day. FBI Director Kash Patel commented on the case in a social media post stating that Dugan had “intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, allowing the subject — an illegal alien — to evade arrest.”

On April 29, 2025, the Wisconsin Supreme Court (WSC) issued an order suspending Dugan from her position as a County Circuit Court judge for however long her federal trial would take. “It is ordered … that Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah C. Dugan is temporarily prohibited from exercising the powers of a circuit court judge in the state of Wisconsin, effective the date of this order and until further order of the court,” wrote the WSC justices.

Flores-Ruiz was in jail for most of the seven-month period following his arrest. In September 2025 he reached a deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to having illegally reentered the United States following his 2013 expulsion. In November 2025 he was deported to his native Mexico.

Judge Dugan’s trial began on December 15, 2025, in a Milwaukee federal court. On December 18 she was convicted on the felony count of obstructing federal agents, and acquitted on the misdemeanor charge of concealing a wanted person. Upon her conviction on the first charge, Wisconsin’s Republican lawmakers announced that they planned to impeach her.

On January 3, 2026, Dugan resigned her position as a Circuit Court judge. In a resignation letter addressed to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, she wrote, in part: “I am the subject of unprecedented federal legal proceedings, which are far from concluded but which present immense and complex challenges that threaten the independence of our judiciary. I am pursuing this fight for myself and for our independent judiciary. However, the Wisconsin citizens that I cherish deserve to start the year with a judge on the bench in Milwaukee County Branch 31 rather than have the fate of that Court rest in a partisan fight in the state legislature.”