The judge was to be arraigned that day. Under federal procedures, she would likely appear in U.S. District Court on the day of the arrest. Instead she was sent to an ICE detention facility and denied her due process rights. This is not legal nor right. They refused her rights to due process. She is a citizen. Hugs
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested April 25 by federal authorities who are investigating whether she tried to help an undocumented immigrant avoid arrest after he appeared in her courtroom last week, officials confirmed.
Brady McCarron, spokesman for U.S. Marshals Service in Washington, D.C., confirmed Dugan was arrested at about 8 a.m. at the Milwaukee County Courthouse and is in federal custody. Under federal procedures, she would likely appear in U.S. District Court on the day of the arrest.
FBI Director Kash Patel posted on X about the arrest. He later deleted the post.
“Just NOW, the FBI arrested Judge Hannah Dugan out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on charges of obstruction — after evidence of Judge Dugan obstructing an immigration arrest operation last week,” Patel wrote. “We believe Judge Dugan 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.”
Multiple Milwaukee County judges confirmed that the arrest took place at the courthouse. Chief Judge Carl Ashley confirmed the incident in an email to courthouse officials.
Officials have not yet identified the defendant whom she is accused of assisting, but it appears to be Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a Mexican immigrant facing three misdemeanor battery counts. He was in Dugan’s courtroom on April 18 for a pre-trial conference.
Flores-Ruiz, 30, is listed as being in ICE custody at Dodge Detention Facility in Juneau, according to the federal online detainee locator system.
Sources have told the Journal Sentinel that ICE officials arrived in Dugan’s courtroom on the morning of April 18. When they went to the chief judge’s office, Dugan directed the defendant and his attorney to a side door in the courtroom, directed them down a private hallway and into the public area on the 6th floor.
Last week’s arrest marked at least the third time in recent months that federal immigration agents have come to the courthouse with arrest warrants. In March and early April, two people were arrested by ICE officials in the hallways of the courthouse.
This is a breaking story and was updated with new information. More updates are coming.
A 20 year old man who is a US citizen with a Hispanic sounding name has twice been arrested and ordered held by ICE. The first time he was released as he sowed the judge his birth certificate and his social security card. The second time he was ordered held for 48 hours for pickup by ICE for an immigration hearing even after the judge seen and vouched for his birth certificate. The prosecutor claimed the court had no jurisdiction now that ICE had a detaining order on him. I don’t think that is legally correct as blue states have said they won’t honor those orders. But the point is it has happened twice now, and if the US doesn’t grant due process people like him could be detained and removed to El Salvador where the tRump people claim they can’t get people back from. We can get our people from Russia, North Korea, and China but we can’t from tiny El Salvador. Hugs
They are not arresting people. They are vanishing them.
Rumeysa Ozturk wasn’t read her rights. She wasn’t told why she was being detained. She was walking to break her fast in Somerville, Massachusetts when masked men in an unmarked SUV pulled up, took her phone, slapped on handcuffs, and dragged her into a vehicle like she was some kind of national security threat.
She’s a doctoral student. A Fulbright scholar. A trauma researcher. But in Donald Trump’s America, she fit the profile: Muslim, foreign-born, sympathetic to Palestinians.
Now she’s locked in a for-profit detention center in Louisiana, hundreds of miles from her lawyer, after a federal judge specifically said she wasn’t to be moved.
They moved her anyway. Because rules no longer apply to those with badges — real or fake.
A MOVEMENT BUILT ON CHAINS AND COWARDS
Alireza Doroudi is gone too.
He’s a doctoral student at the University of Alabama, born in Iran, studying mechanical engineering. No criminal record. No warning. Just scooped off the grid.
ICE refuses to say where he’s being held. No public charge has been announced. His only crime appears to be existing in the wrong body, from the wrong country, in the wrong era.
Mahmoud Khalil was next — a Columbia student, arrested for leading pro-Palestinian protests. Trump labeled him a “radical foreign Hamas sympathizer” on Truth Social. Days later, he was gone.
Jeanette Vizguerra was taken from her Target shift in Colorado, chained at the waist.
Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez, a farmworker organizer, was dragged from his car at dawn in Washington. His window was smashed by federal agents. His voice silenced.
These aren’t isolated incidents. These are deliberate acts of political intimidation.
They are testing the system — testing us — to see how many people they can disappear before we stop calling it democracy.
WHEN ICE IS A BADGE — AND A COSTUME
While the real ICE disappears scholars, organizers, and mothers, the fakes are circling like vultures.
In South Carolina, Sean-Michael Johnson posed as an ICE officer. He pulled over a van of Latino men, screamed slurs, jiggled their keys, and knocked a phone out of someone’s hand. “You’re going back to Mexico!” he shouted. He wasn’t an agent — but he played one with conviction.
In North Carolina, Carl Thomas Bennett used a fake badge to sexually assault a woman at a motel. He told her if she didn’t comply, he’d have her deported. He held up a counterfeit ID and pretended to be the state.
And in Philadelphia, a Temple University student in an “ICE” shirt tried to storm a dorm building with two accomplices. They were dressed for the part, intoxicated by the illusion of authority, emboldened by the climate.
This is what happens when the state makes cruelty a brand. When a badge becomes a fetish object. When the line between enforcement and cosplay disappears altogether.
THE WHOLE SYSTEM IS THE CRIME
Let’s stop pretending this is a coincidence.
This is a unified strategy. The Trump administration is using ICE like a personal strike force — targeting international students, protest leaders, organizers, and mothers with surgical precision.
They invoke secret designations. They bypass due process. They manufacture pretexts out of thin air and rely on the fog of bureaucracy to hide the blood on the floor.
The point isn’t law enforcement. The point is deterrence. Spectacle. Control.
This is what political cleansing looks like when it’s dressed up in the language of national security.
They’re showing the world that resistance has a cost — and the cost is your freedom, your voice, your visibility, your future.
SILENCE IS CONSENT. AND WE ARE LOUD.
There is no middle ground here. No fence to sit on. No neutral position when people are being kidnapped in the name of the state.
ICE doesn’t need your applause. It needs your silence. Every time a student vanishes and the media shrugs, every time a woman is cuffed and the public looks away, the machine gets stronger.
They are daring us to ignore it. They are counting on our numbness. They are betting that we’ll keep scrolling.
We cannot let them win.
This is not border policy. This is not visa enforcement. This is not safety.This is authoritarianism with a PowerPoint presentation.This is fascism disguised as formality.
This is the state stripping people from the land and pretending it’s order.
Let the record show:
They took people.
And we did not look away.
We saw it.
We named it.
We raised hell.
And we did not stop.
(I didn’t write this. Credit goes to Fear and Loathing: Closer to the Edge)
So it has come to this in the US, if you are not white and speaking english you must carry your papers like Nazi Germany? Seriously in the land of the free. I guess it is only free if you are white males? I wonder what they do it they hear people speaking French from Canada, arrest them and start an international issues? Hugs
They were not allowed to clarify their status until they were already in custody, according to Telemundo Puerto Rico.
Despite the apology, the family was allegedly left stranded and had to arrange their own transportation home.
They also advise keeping documents secure and on hand.
A Puerto Rican family, all U.S. citizens, was wrongfully detained by ICE in Milwaukee after speaking Spanish.
A Puerto Rican family, including a toddler, was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Milwaukee after being overheard speaking Spanish; this incident is the latest in a surge of racial profiling concerns amid Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The family, all U.S. citizens, were transported to a detention center before officials acknowledged their mistake and issued an apology.
The mother, grandmother, and young child had been shopping when authorities approached and detained them. They were not allowed to clarify their status until they were already in custody, according to Telemundo Puerto Rico.
“My sister, in English, explained that not only are they American citizens, but that they are from Puerto Rico. They were born in Puerto Rico,” a family member told host Milly Méndez while remaining anonymous due to fears surrounding the situation.
Upon presenting official documents, the officials reportedly softened their stance. “I’m so sorry,” one officer said, according to the family’s account.Despite the apology, the family was allegedly left stranded and had to arrange their own transportation home.
Instagram users reacted to Méndez’s post with frustration.
Instagram
“At what store? Why didn’t he give that information here? So you’re shopping with a Birth Certificate on top of it?!… What is that!” One user questioned.
Another expressed disappointment in the political climate, commenting, “Thank you… What a shame that the people keep voting for colors and not values… it’s going to get worse.”
Puerto Rican family detained by ICE in Milwaukee after being observed speaking Spanish https://t.co/FkXDiCPKja
The situation gained traction after journalist Adrian Carrasquillo discussed the case on X, writing, “Another PUERTO RICAN family detained, a man tells Telemundo his sister, mother-in-law, & a child were taken by ICE in Milwaukee & driven to [a] facility where his sister explained that they’re US CITIZENS. ICE response to this flagrant violation? ‘Sorry.'”
Attorneys nationwide are now speaking out to educate immigrants and Black Indigenous People of Color about their rights when confronted by ICE, including the right to remain silent, the right to legal representation, and the ability to refuse entry without a warrant. They also advise keeping documents secure and on hand.
Daniel Bice
Scottie's Playtime 