Cnn
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The arrest of a Wisconsin state judge for allegedly helped an immigrant undocumented to arrest opened a new front in the aggressive attempted Trump administration to carry out a historic expulsion campaign.
The decision of the Ministry of Justice of charge The County Count of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan, for obstruction and hiding the individual to arrest, referred a projector to the administration’s decision to exercise the application of immigration to certain places which have been mainly prohibited to such a federal activity, including courthouses, schools and places of worship.
Friday morning, his arrest immediately aroused intense criticism from legal experts and Democratic legislators, who largely considered him as the last offer of the Trump administration in the tribunals of strong arms across the country when he goes forward with controversial immigration policies.
“Pure intimidation – Nothing more than that,” said Retirement Federal Judge Nancy Gertner.
The Ministry of Justice has repeatedly said that he would investigate local officials who do not help federal immigration authorities. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump has revived a policy of his first mandate which allows federal officials to carry out immigration -related arrests before the courts.
But as in the so-called sanctuary cities of the United States, judicial leaders are not obliged to work with federal officials in such arrests if the mandate executed is an administrative and non-judicial mandate.
This was the case for Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, which federal officials were trying to arrest on April 18, the day he appeared before Dugan in a criminal case. After learning that the officials were in possession of an administrative mandate for Flores-Ruiz, the judge would have helped him, as well as his lawyer, from a non-public zone of the courthouse. Flores-Ruiz was arrested by federal agents shortly after.
“Without a mandate (judicial), there would obviously be literally no obligation for her to cooperate. This would only happen if there was a mandate,” said Jeff Swartz, a former Florida State judge at Brianna Keilar de CNN on “CNN News Central”. “She has no obligation to help this accused at all in particular in a civil affair.”
Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig said he was probably that Dugan would not be confronted with the federal accusations if she had only refused to cooperate with the agents that day.
In order for her conduct to lead to the accusations she faced, he said: “There must be an affirmative act taken. And here, showing this person the rear door, giving this person access to the rear door, then putting on the person through the rear door would be an affirmative act. ”
But Honig, a CNN legal analyst, stressed that prosecutors must take into account a multitude of factors to decide whether the accusations of obstruction are “appropriate and necessary”.
In this case, he said, there are legitimate questions about the question of whether the continuation of the accusations against Dugan could represent the overtaking of the prosecutor.
Dugan’s lawyer Steven Biskupic, said in a statement later on Friday that his client “joined the rule of law and the principles of the regular procedure for his entire career as a lawyer and judge”.
“Judge Dugan will defend himself vigorously and can’t wait to be exempt,” he added.
Dugan’s arrest is not the first time that the Ministry of Justice under Trump has accused an in -office of having helped an undocumented immigrant to escape an immigration agent.
In 2019, a judge of the State of Massachusetts was charged with obstruction of justice and other federal accusations, which were then abandoned during the Biden administration.
“I think the canary in the coal mine was the Shelley Joseph affair in the Massachusetts,” said Gertner.
She and other experts with whom CNN spoke said that the way this case was treated was much more measured than the way in which the Ministry of Justice managed Dugan, highlighting the political nature of the new subject.
Gertner, for example, underlined the fact that Dugan was arrested for an offense in white collar, while the Massachusetts judge – Shelley Richmond Joseph – was not placed in police custody.
“I cannot emphasize enough how absurd it is,” said Gertner. “It is not a person who will flee. It is not a person who threatens the community. ”
Experts also underlined the public statements that administration officials have praised the case of Dugan as proof of their intention to use his lawsuits for political purposes.
Among these civil servants are the Attorney General Pam Bondi, who said in an interview on Fox News after the execution of the arrest that “if you destroy evidence and you clog justice, when you have victims sitting in a domestic violence courtroom and you escort a criminal defendant by the rear door, it will not be tolerated.”
“I think some of these judges think they are going beyond and above the law, and they are not,” added Bondi.
Doug Keith, who is the principal advisor to the Brennan Center for Justice’s judicial program, said it is possible that more dramatic episodes can arise while the Trump administration continues to seek general cooperation in its expulsion campaign.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s the last conflict we will see like that,” said Keith.
“The change of policy that Ice made around the arrests of the courthouse on January 21 created these circumstances in which we should expect to see chaos like this takes place in more courthouse across the country,” he added.
Hannah Rabinowitz from CNN and Michael Williams contributed to this report.