What does it mean to celebrate freedom from tyranny and the birth of a government founded on equal rights and the consent of the governed amid the current ICE surge? Over the last several days, as Isiah Holmes reports, masked federal agents have been snatching people off the streets in Milwaukee and Madison, breaking car windows, separating families, spreading fear and violently arresting people who have no criminal record.
This is the backdrop to the Fourth of July holiday this year.
A few days after the fireworks, on July 8, former Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan faces sentencing for her conviction of obstructing federal agents who came to her courtroom to arrest Eduardo Flores Ruiz, a man who appeared before her on misdemeanor charges last April. Objecting to federal immigration arrests inside the courthouse, which had been disrupting proceedings for weeks, Dugan confronted the agents, then quickly ended Flores Ruiz’s hearing and led him out a side door. He was arrested outside the courthouse minutes later. For her defiant act, Dugan was subjected to a campaign of intimidation and public humiliation. She was arrested, handcuffed, shackled, perp-walked through the courthouse, and had her picture plastered all over social media by FBI director Kash Patel and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi. Now, federal prosecutors argue, she should be sent to prison for 15-21 months.
“This was a serious offense, and it warrants a correspondingly serious sentence,” they wrote in their sentencing memorandum.
Dugan’s crime is particularly grave, federal prosecutors write, because “she used her position to interfere with the lawful administration of justice. That betrayal magnifies the seriousness of the offense.”
Her conduct “undermined public confidence in the judicial process,” they continue, and only a serious sentence can “reaffirm a foundational principle of our criminal justice system: no one is above the law.”
That last, high-minded sentence comes directly from a gloating social media post by Bondi, which drew responses inducing: “except for J6ers and Donald Trump.”
The heavy-handedness of the Dugan arrest came before the much more traumatic ICE surges in Chicago and Minneapolis and the cold-blooded killings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents.
What does it mean, given everything that has happened just over the last year, when federal prosecutors argue that punishing Dugan beyond the loss of her reputation, her livelihood, her home — she moved out after receiving serious threats — and her ability to go out in public, is a matter of “the need to promote respect for the law”?
“Respect for the law” under President Donald Trump is a one-way street. It means respect for the unfettered authority of his administration. His own complete lack of respect for the rule of law or Americans’ constitutional rights is clear.
The actions of the Trump administration ring a bell on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which, among its enumerated grievances against the King of England, lists having “kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures” and “protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States”.
There has still been no disciplinary action, investigation or even apology from the U.S. government for the shootings of Renee Good or Alex Pretti.
Dugan’s colleague, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Joseph Wall, in a letter to the court included in the defendant’s sentencing memorandum,, describes Dugan’s “career-long commitment to the poor and the powerless,” including her pro bono work for Legal Action, Catholic Charities and at the Immigration Legal Services Program, as well as “founding, staffing and leading no less than ten programs and projects that provided legal services and other assistance to immigrants, the poor, and the unrepresented.”
She has already been punished enough, Wall writes. Instead of more than a year in prison, he suggests Dugan’s sentence should be time served. That happens to be the same sentence given to Eduardo Flores Ruiz, the man she was convicted of trying to help escape.
Of Dugan’s public arrest at the courthouse, where she was paraded in front of her colleagues in handcuffs and shackles, Wall writes, “Of course, none of that was necessary. It was all meant to humiliate her. It was meant to humiliate her in the eyes of her colleagues and the general public.”
It was also meant to strike fear in the hearts of other judges and public officials who might dare to stand up to the Trump administration.
Dugan’s lawyers rebut the prosecution’s argument that her imprisonment would serve as a deterrent to future crime, pointing out that not only has she been an exemplary member of her community with no prior criminal record, she is no longer a judge and cannot possibly repeat the particular act of which she was convicted.
As for other judges taking the wrong lesson and going rogue, in their sentencing memo, Dugan’s lawyers point out that the Trump administration’s aggressive ICE policy of conducting arrests inside of courthouses has been blocked by a federal judge in a recent class action suit.
In his decision, U.S. District Court Judge Casey Pitts called the Trump administration’s reversal of a policy that previously avoided arrests in courthouses “arbitrary and capricious,” and pointed to ICE’s previous guidance stating that courthouse arrests “disincentivize” immigrants from attending their hearings.
This was precisely the concern judges in Milwaukee were actively discussing last April, when Dugan confronted the agents outside her courtroom and then led Flores Ruiz out a side door.
The prosecution, in demanding a heavy sentence, also claims that Dugan “put others in danger” by forcing agents to resort to making an arrest outside the courthouse after a foot chase, where they might have been hit by a car. “None of this would have happened but for the defendant’s interference with law enforcement officers who were merely attempting to do their duty in a peaceful and safe manner.”
The assertion that federal immigration agents deploying extraordinarily aggressive new tactics are “peaceful and safe” flies in the face of every image of home invasions, broken windows, reckless driving, and, of course, deadly shootings on previously peaceful residential streets. ICE prefers to make arrests at courthouses because they are soft targets and therefore “safe” for armed, masked agents. So, too, are many of the people they are going after. In June, Diana Socha Torres and her 8-year-old son were grabbed by ICE agents from their home in the Wisconsin Dells. They are currently sitting in a jail-like detention center in Dilley, Texas, notorious for overcrowding and shortages of food, water and medicine. Socha Torres has committed no crime. She has been living and working in the U.S. for years while pursuing an asylum claim based on what her lawyer says is her legitimate fear of violence in Colombia. She has never missed a court date until recently. Missed court dates have become common, her lawyer told Wisconsin Public Radio, as immigration courts rapidly change dates and many clients are unaware that their appearances have been rescheduled. For this paperwork infraction, the U.S. government is keeping Socha Torres and a little boy in a dangerous South Texas jail.
This is the type of repression that sparked a revolution 250 years ago. Real patriotism means standing up to it today.
