Federal judge fines fellow judge for helping an illegal immigrant evade ICE

The Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge Milwaukee, Hannah Dugan, was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine after being found guilty of helping an undocumented immigrant leave the courthouse to avoid arrest by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in April 2025.

The sentence was handed down by Federal Judge Lynn Adelman, who justified the penalty by noting that Dugan, although she acted wrongly, made a decision driven by her disagreement with the enforcement of immigration laws.

"The punishment must be proportional to the offender and not merely to the crime"

"A person who is otherwise a good person, but who was upset by the enforcement of immigration laws in this country, a widely held view, made a bad decision at that moment," Adelman stated during the hearing.

The judge, appointed to the position by former President Bill Clinton in 1997 and a former Democratic leader of the Wisconsin, further argued that “the punishment must be proportional to the offender and not merely to the crime.”

The court’s decision has drawn criticism from those who believed that the case warranted a prison sentence, as requested by federal prosecutors. For its part, Dugan’s defense had asked that the sentence be limited to the time the judge had already spent in custody.

During the hearing, Dugan defended her actions and asserted that she never failed to fulfill her duty as a public servant.

“I have been labeled both a criminal and a hero. I am a public official who was simply trying to do my job,” she stated, according to the report cited by the media.

She also expressed her intention to return to public service and quoted President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address to express her commitment to democracy and community service.