Milwaukee County Judge Dugan trial: Immigration policy questions

Courthouse immigration enforcement questions

The federal case against Milwaukee County Judge Dugan has sparked a big question: How should local courts interact with ICE and its agents?

MILWAUKEE - The federal case against Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan has sparked a big question: How should local courts interact with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its agents?

Judge Dugan

The backstory:

It has been more than seven months since federal agents went outside Dugan's courtroom to arrest an undocumented man. The Milwaukee County courthouse still does not have a policy on the books, and there's no guidance at the state level either.

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Federal prosecutors accuse Dugan of helping Eduardo Flores-Ruiz evade immigration agents at the Milwaukee County Courthouse in April.

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Surveillance video showed Dugan talking to agents outside her courtroom. According to prosecutors, she told those immigration agents to go talk to Chief Judge Carl Ashley, whose office is next to her courtroom.

The criminal complaint said Ashley told those agents he was working on a policy dictating where ICE could safely conduct arrests. It said he told them arrests should not happen in a courtroom nor private locations, but he indicated hallways are public.

Courthouse policy

What they're saying:

For months, Ashley said he has been working on the policy.

"People should understand that law enforcement from around this county have exercised warrants in the public courthouse for years. This is not new," Ashley told the county board in April, before the Dugan incident, but after two other immigration arrests inside the courthouse.

Milwaukee County Chief Judge Carl Ashley's office

That month, he also told FOX6: "We’re trying to work out a process where there can be respect for the courtroom and what we’re doing, but allow the Immigration and Customs Enforcement to do what they need to do, as well. We want to stay in our lane, and we want to be transparent with the community about what we can do and what we can’t."

"In a perfect world, we would have the opportunity to have a courthouse where people would never have to worry about coming there for their activities, but the reality is there are legal parameters, which allow the government to effectuate warrants. And we’re not going to interfere with that," added Ashley.

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What's next:

Milwaukee County Chief Judge Carl Ashley said the policy is still a draft and weeks away from release, after more than seven months since work began on the project. That would suggest he will not release the policy until after the high-stakes Dugan trial concludes.

Dig deeper:

The state court system also doesn't have statewide guidance on how judges should interact with ICE.

FOX6 News obtained records. In one email after Dugan's arrest, Sawyer County Judge Monica Isham wrote other judges saying she would not let ICE take someone out of her courtroom. She wrote that without guidance, she refused to hold court.

Records show liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Dallet forwarded that email to her fellow liberal justices – but not the conservative justices.