Last Friday, the FBI arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, claiming that she helped a migrant avoid arrest from federal immigration authorities.

While highly irregular, according to law professionals, there is precedent for this arrest—pretty much the same situation happened in 2019 during the first Trump administration. A Massachusetts judge ushered a defendant out of a courtroom where Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers laid in wait, ready to do some arresting. That judge faced charges (though wasn’t dragged out in handcuffs in the public, performative way Dugan was). President Joe Biden ultimately tossed out the charges in the 2019 case. 

Whether or not Dugan did what she’s accused of, there’s precedent for judges acting in this way. And, no, Attorney General Pam Bondi, this is not “radical leftist judges” standing in the way of Trump’s agenda. These behaviors are a reaction to ICE’s continued presence in US courtrooms causing a chilling effect on the legal system and making it harder for courts to do their job.

Washington, still a bastion of sanity in some arenas, tackled this ghoulish ICE behavior back in 2020 with a law banning courthouse arrests without warrants, and blocking staff—including lawyers, judges, and security officers—from tipping off ICE. It’s the kind of check on power that we used to rely on the legal system to provide. 

This started back in December 2019, when Mary E. Fairhurst, then the chief justice of the Washington Supreme Court, penned a letter to presiding judges around Washington about ICE presence at the courts.

“The problem of immigration arrests at or around our courthouses has deeply troubled me because of the effect it has on our immigrant populations and the growing perception that we are a cooperating entity in those arrests,” Fairhurst wrote. 

According to Christopher Sanders, a former federal public defender in Seattle, ICE is a constant presence at state courthouses. “Clients would be arrested by ICE at their state courthouse hearings and then brought down the street and charged with immigration crime,” Sanders said.

Sanders said these officers usually come into courtrooms and don’t identify themselves. They’re often in plain clothes. 

Fairhurst’s letter continued: “I do oppose using our locations as the site for those arrests. Our courthouses should be treated as “sensitive locations” like schools and hospital, as a place where everyone should be free to come and go without fear. Our courthouse should not be used as a magnet for targeting certain populations, regardless of their legal status.”

The outrage turned into House Bill 2567 during the 2019-2020 legislative session. The bill contained safeguards outlawing warrantless civil immigration arrests at state courthouses. Beyond that, the bill stopped courts from collecting information about immigration status unless relevant to a person’s trial and prevented anyone sharing private personal information with ICE—they couldn’t even alert ICE about who would be in the courtroom. Additionally, under the bill, court security started collecting the names and purposes of all ICE officers who showed up on any particular day and they alerted judges ahead of proceedings about the officers’ presence. 

Sanders and his wife, Erika Evans, who is now running for Seattle City Attorney, jumpstarted a letter writing campaign with the Minority and Justice Commission in support of HB 2567. 

Their letters advocated for the bill, but also addressed the question of whether a court could be truly impartial if it didn’t willingly let the people within its walls be detained by ICE—a question that is paramount in Dugan’s arrest. 

“We do not believe that HB 2567 jeopardizes the independence of the judiciary,” the Minority and Justice Commission letter read. “Rather, it recognizes the sanctity of courthouses, the rule of law, and the critical role that court personnel play in fostering public confidence in the judicial branch. Access to our courts is fundamental to a functioning democracy.”

Unfortunately, our federal government seems far more interested in theatrics than in maintaining a functioning democracy. Judges who act in the interest of access and fairness, like Dugan may have, will instead face the wrath of Bondi. 

“I think some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law, and they are not,” Bondi told Fox News in an interview last week. “We are sending a very strong message today: If you are harboring a fugitive, we don’t care who you are. If you are helping hide one, if you are giving a [gang] member guns, anyone who is illegally in this country, we will come after you, and we will prosecute you. We will find you.”