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Milwaukee County Circuit Courtroom Choose Hannah Dugan was arrested on Friday for allegedly serving to a person residing in the USA with out authorized standing evade federal immigration authorities. Dugan faces two federal felony counts — obstruction and concealing a person.
Dugan’s case is just like a 2019 case introduced by federal prosecutors towards Massachusetts Choose Shelley M. Richmond Joseph. In that case, Joseph was accused of serving to an unauthorized immigrant keep away from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent after a court docket look.
In each instances, federal officers alleged the state judges allowed the defendants to exit their courtrooms by way of different routes to keep away from federal immigration officers ready exterior the courtrooms in publicly accessible areas.
In a prison grievance filed final week, federal officers alleged that Dugan confronted immigration enforcement officers exterior of her courtroom as they waited for a defendant who was scheduled to seem earlier than her completed his court docket enterprise. Witnesses reported that Dugan “was visibly upset and had a confrontational, indignant demeanor,” based on the grievance. Dugan requested to see the warrant the immigration officers had been performing upon after which referred them to see the county’s chief choose.
After returning to the courtroom, Dugan then escorted the person and his lawyer by way of a door that results in a “nonpublic space” of the courthouse, the grievance states.
The same collection of occasions unfolded within the Massachusetts case. After studying that an ICE agent was ready to arrest a defendant, Joseph finally had the person exit the courtroom by way of a nonpublic exit, federal authorities alleged in a 2019 indictment. A separate court docket official then helped him exit the constructing by way of a again door.
The Massachusetts case was dismissed in 2022. In trade, Joseph referred herself to the Massachusetts Fee on Judicial Conduct, per The New York Instances.
One key distinction between the 2 instances: Joseph was indicted. Dugan was served a prison grievance. To safe an indictment, prosecutors need to current proof to a panel of on a regular basis Wisconsin residents and persuade them there’s possible trigger a criminal offense has been dedicated. For prison complaints, officers solely need to get the sign-off of a federal choose, however then later need to safe an indictment from a grand jury, two former federal prosecutors informed Wisconsin Watch.
Now, the federal authorities has 21 days to hunt an indictment, based on Laurie Levenson, a regulation professor at Loyola Marymount College and a former federal prosecutor.
“It’s uncommon that this occurred with an arrest and grievance as a result of there actually isn’t any indication that the Choose was a flight danger or hazard to the neighborhood,” she informed Wisconsin Watch in an e-mail. “They simply might have gone to the grand jury first and summoned her in IF the grand jury needed to indict.”
Stephen Kravit, a Milwaukee space lawyer and former federal prosecutor, mentioned prison complaints are uncommon within the Jap District of Wisconsin and are normally reserved for “an exigent state of affairs the place the defendant’s whereabouts aren’t particularly identified or the presence on this space is momentary.”
“None of that applies to a sitting Circuit Courtroom Choose,” he added in an e-mail.
As a substitute, Kravit mentioned, “this was carried out in a rush to make a political level.” He added, “Usually, an individual charged even with felonies aged 60+ with no file and no probability of fleeing can be summoned to indicate up at an appointed time for reserving and arraignment. Not right here. And that was the purpose.”
🚘 Funds highway journey. The Joint Finance Committee will maintain a pair of hearings on Monday and Tuesday this week, stepping away from the Capitol in Madison to listen to from Wisconsin residents in Hayward and Wausau about what they need included within the state’s subsequent two-year price range.
Will probably be the third and fourth time thus far that the committee has heard from the general public on the spending plan. However because the GOP-controlled committee continues to undergo the motions of crafting the price range, Meeting Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, indicated final week that Republican lawmakers might punt on passing a brand new price range altogether.
Vos was reacting to a Wisconsin Supreme Courtroom resolution that left intact a transfer from Gov. Tony Evers that supplied for annual public faculty funding will increase for the subsequent 400 years. “It’s actually a risk if we will’t discover a method for us to get to a typical center floor,” Vos mentioned of spiking the funding plan final week on the “Jay Weber Present.” “However that’s not the purpose.”
“It’s one thing we’re speaking about, nevertheless it wouldn’t be the primary go-to,” Vos added, noting that it has by no means occurred earlier than. The state has handed a price range each two years since 1931, based on the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau.
However even when the Legislature had been to cross on sending a brand new spending plan to Evers, issues within the state wouldn’t shut down. In Wisconsin, the state continues working on the present spending ranges till a brand new price range is accepted.
📈 Scholar homelessness rising. Homelessness amongst Ok-12 Wisconsin college students reached a brand new excessive in 2024, rising 9% over the earlier yr regardless of whole enrollment declining barely.
That’s based on a brand new report from the Wisconsin Coverage Discussion board, which discovered that a bit of greater than 20,000 Wisconsin college students had been homeless in 2023-24. If that determine appears excessive, it’s as a result of it’s. Homelessness amongst college students is counted utilizing a definition that’s extra expansive than the one employed by the U.S. Division of Housing and City Improvement. The federal McKinney-Vento Act defines homeless kids and youth as these “who lack a hard and fast, common, and ample nighttime residence.”
It’s the third straight yr that pupil homelessness elevated in Wisconsin, the report discovered, reaching a brand new excessive because the state Division of Public Instruction began protecting information in 2019.
“The variety of college students affected by homelessness has grown and is more likely to proceed to stay excessive within the close to future as an inadequate provide of reasonably priced housing stays a lingering downside all through the state,” the report concludes. “Addressing the wants of this high-risk group of scholars may gain advantage not solely them but in addition Wisconsin’s academic outcomes general.”
Wisconsin Watch’s Hallie Claflin has been documenting the state’s rural homelessness disaster, together with in her newest report about police departments transporting homeless individuals exterior their jurisdiction. We’ll be watching the price range course of intently to see if lawmakers handle this problem or equally deal with it as out of sight, out of thoughts.
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