The Wisconsin judge accused of obstructing federal authorities who sought to stop an undocumented immigrant for deportation temporarily relieved his duties on Tuesday, shows an order from the Superior Court of the State.
The Order of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin prohibits the judge of the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, Hannah Dugan, from their position, while federal charges are awarded.
The court, who said he was acting on his own and not in response to anyone’s request, said the order intended to protect public trust in Wisconsin’s courts.
A criminal complaint shows that Dugan was accused of obstructing or preventing a procedure before an department or agency of the United States, a serious crime, and hiding an individual to avoid his discovery and arrest, a minor crime.
He could face a maximum prison sentence of six years.
The FBI arrested Dugan, who was first chosen for the Circuit Court in 2016, last week in the parking lot of the Milwaukee County Palace, said a senior official of the law to NBC News.
His lawyers declined to comment to NBC News on Tuesday, but his legal team told Associated Press that he was disappointed in “the court acted unilaterally. We continued to affirm the innocence of Judge Dugan and we expect his claim in court.”
A statement issued previously in his name said that he would defend himself “vigorously and hopes to be exonerated.”
A affidavit in the case alleges that on April 18, the agents of the application of immigration and customs of the United States planned to detain a man who appeared in the hagon court room in a case of domestic violence. Eduardo Flores-Ruiz had been previously deported from the United States, and an immigration official found a probable cause to believe that he could be eliminated from the country, according to the affidavit.
It is alleged that Decan and another unidentified judge faced the agents in the hall, asking if they had a court order and tell them to talk to the main judge, according to the affidavit. After they died escorted Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer through a jury door, the agents chased them on foot and put Flores-Ruiz, according to the affidavit.
Trump’s administration accused Dugan of “intentionally erroneous federal inlays” in a law, a spokesman for the National Security Department, called “shocking and shameful.”
His arrest caused protests outside the local FBI office, where a state legislator told the protesters during the weekend that the Judiciary acts “as a check for the Executive Power without control. And the democracies in operation do not enclose the judges.”
