The Wisconsin judge arrested last month and accused of helping an undocumented immigrant evade federal agents was indicted by a federal grand jury on Tuesday on charges of concealing a person from arrest and obstruction of proceedings.
The indictment of the judge, Hannah C. Dugan of the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, was a routine but significant step in the Justice Department’s case against her. The Trump administration has defended the prosecution as a warning that no one is above the law, while many Democrats, lawyers and former judges have denounced it as an assault on the judiciary.
Judge Dugan, who has been temporarily removed from the bench by the Wisconsin Supreme Court while the case against her advances, has indicated through a lawyer that she intends to fight the charges. She is expected to appear in court on Thursday.
“Judge Hannah C. Dugan has committed herself to the rule of law and the principles of due process for her entire career as a lawyer and a judge,” her lawyers said in a statement shortly after she was arrested. They added on Tuesday that “Judge Dugan asserts her innocence and looks forward to being vindicated in court.”
The indictment was announced during a short hearing on Tuesday evening at the federal courthouse in downtown Milwaukee. After 20 members of a grand jury entered a wood-paneled courtroom and took their seats, a judge examined paperwork and indicated that Judge Dugan, along with other defendants in unrelated cases, had been indicted.
Judge Dugan’s transformation from a little-known local jurist to a face of the national immigration debate began on April 18 with a pretrial hearing in a domestic abuse case against Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a Mexican immigrant.