Trump FBI Arrests a State Judge for Allegedly Defying the Immigration Police State

Apr 26, 2025

Referring to the “Trump FBI” is itself a problem, since the agency is supposed to enjoy independence from presidential meddling. Not so under Director Kash Patel, a Trump crony who lacks the background and experience of previous FBI directors and was appointed solely for his loyalty.

Now we see the result: The FBI has arrested a state judge for allegedly obstructing the ICE arrest of an immigrant when he showed up for a hearing in her courtroom. As usual, the local papers were already on the case, so see earlier reporting from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

But a Washington Post report puts the story in a wider context:

According to reporting by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, ICE agents arrived in Dugan’s courtroom last Friday during a pre-trial hearing for Eduardo Flores Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican national who is facing misdemeanor battery charges in Wisconsin.
Dugan asked the agents to leave and speak to the circuit court’s chief judge, the Journal Sentinel reported. By the time they returned, Flores Ruiz had left.
“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,” Patel wrote in his post.
Judges in some jurisdictions across the country have criticized ICE’s efforts to locate and detain migrants at courthouses. They say those efforts have made migrants unwilling to show up as victims or witnesses in unrelated hearings because they are afraid they might face arrest. …
Within days of Trump’s return to the White House in January, a top Justice Department official directed federal prosecutors nationwide to investigate and potentially charge state and local officials who impede the president’s immigration enforcement agenda.
“Federal law prohibits state and local actors from resisting, obstructing, and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration-related commands,” wrote Emil Bove, then acting deputy attorney general.

In this case, the process is part of the punishment. It is highly unusual for a defendant like this, who is not a flight risk, to be subject to arrest instead of being requested to turn herself in for processing.

This is part of the Trump administration’s effort to dragoon state and local law enforcement and legal systems as instruments of federal power and to stamp out any local resistance to his anti-immigrant police state.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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