MILWAUKEE — Former Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan won’t serve prison time or probation and has been fined $5,000, a judge determined on Wednesday during her sentencing hearing.

It comes after a jury found her guilty of obstruction last year for helping an immigrant evade federal agents.

During the hearing, Dugan’s defense team called two character witnesses to the stand to speak on her behalf, including Rev. Gregory J. O’Meara, who is also a Marquette University Law School faculty member, and Janine Geske, the retired director of the Andrew Center for Restorative Justice and a law professor at Marquette.

“Hannah models what it means to be a Christian,” O’Meara said.

Dugan herself also spoke for the first time since the case against her began.

She told U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman that she tried to “maintain a courtroom with the decorum and safety the public deserves.”

Dugan added her actions on April 18, 2025, when the incident occurred, were “not done with any malicious intent or to advance any personal interest.”

Wrapping up her remarks, Dugan said to the court she has been cast as a scofflaw and a hero, but considers herself neither of those things.

“I am a public servant who’s just trying to do my job,” Dugan said, adding that she has had to retire from public life due to threats against her and her family.

A prosecutor then acknowledged that “she has experienced collateral damage because of her conduct,” but said “judges can’t choose to disregard the law.”

Prosecutors argued that Dugan’s actions amounted to an “abuse of trust” and asked the court’s sentence to reflect that.

Adelman then spoke, saying Dugan made a bad decision and that he doesn’t believe prison is necessary.

“This is a few minutes of conduct for someone who has dedicated her life to public service,” the judge said. “It’s a marked deviation from an otherwise law-abiding life.”

He also noted that Dugan’s actions didn’t stop the ICE agents from arresting the defendant outside the courthouse.

In April of last year, federal agents showed up at the Milwaukee County Courthouse to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, who had reentered the country illegally. On that particular day, he was appearing before Dugan’s courtroom for a state battery case.

Dugan confronted the federal agents in a hallway outside the courtroom and directed them to the chief judge’s office. Following that, she helped Flores-Ruiz and his attorney out a private jury door. Agents eventually caught up to him outside the courthouse.

Dugan was later arrested and charged for her part in the incident, and she was found guilty of obstruction last December; she was acquitted on her concealment charge.

Her lawyers argued during her trial that President Donald Trump’s administration sought to “crush” Dugan in an effort to ensure judicial compliance with the ICE strategy of targeting immigrants as they showed up for court hearings.

Dugan resigned the Milwaukee County circuit judgeship she had held for nine years in January amid threats of impeachment from Republican state lawmakers who labeled her an activist judge. In her resignation letter, she said her prosecution threatened “the independence of our judiciary.” 

Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who has the backing of Trump in his race for governor, urged authorities to “lock her up” in a social media post following her conviction.

A major traffic shift will start on one of Minnesota’s busiest highways Wednesday morning. A stretch of eastbound I-394 will be down to just two lanes for months. That means getting from the west metro to downtown Minneapolis could be tricky. Ubah Ali spoke to people who are already feeling the effects.

A week ahead of a key vote, the company that seeks to build a data center near Irvington has removed an entire building from its site plan in response to community backlash.

The scaled-back proposal from Atlanta-based DC BLOX consolidates three facilities into two and will feature 25 fewer backup diesel generators, a roughly 35% reduction in electricity demand, and a larger buffer zone south of the Pennsy Trail and an adjacent elementary school.

The company still expects the project to create up to 600 construction jobs and bring about $2 billion in investment — a mix of construction costs and clients’ spending on computing equipment to store data. But the new proposal will create 17 permanent jobs, about half as many as originally planned.

“These layout changes represent a proactive step by DC BLOX that addresses community feedback regarding neighborhood density, utility capacity, and visual impact,” spokeswoman Nichole Thomas said in a July 8 press release, “while maintaining the massive economic and tax-base advantages of the $2 billion tech infrastructure investment.”

The change comes a week before the company’s use variance request is set for a vote in a July 15 Metropolitan Development Commission hearing. The original plans called for three buildings spanning 410,000 square feet, requiring 56 diesel generators and close to 80 megawatts of power demand.

If the plans at 305 Fintail Drive are approved, the company says the first building, a one-story facility between about 70,000-80,000 square feet, will likely be finished within two years. The second building, a two-story roughly 250,000-square-foot center, could begin construction in 2029 and be finished by 2031. Together, they would use an estimated 31 generators and about 50 megawatts.

Community backlash prompts environmental pledges

Many east-side residents have organized against the planned data center for months, packing a June 11 meeting where the company received preliminary approval. Among their chief complaints are that the data center could bring noise, air pollution and a spike in local electricity demand within a mile of thousands of residences while creating relatively few jobs.

DC BLOX has touted the tax benefits and union construction jobs a data center campus would bring to a blighted industrial site, where more popular uses like housing or a park are prohibited by state law. They say the finished campus, at the site of a former Ford manufacturing plant, would be “among the largest property-tax contributors” in Warren Township and Marion County.

More: This contaminated site is ground zero in data center fight. Would it help Irvington?

The company recently pledged 20 commitments, including to pay 100% of its utility costs, protect air quality by capturing 95% of particulate emissions on diesel generators, and to minimize water usage with a closed-loop or waterless system to cool its whirring computers. DC BLOX would also contribute $100,000 over five years to Pennsy Trail improvements and a “multi-million dollar investment … to meet priority needs of the community.”

While many residents demand a moratorium on new data centers, the city recently advanced regulations on the unprecedented developments.

A proposal moving through the Indianapolis City-County Council aims to keep the facilities at least 400 feet away from protected districts like neighborhoods, limit sound levels to 65 decibels and require detailed site plans that address common concerns like water and energy usage. Councilors plan to hear public comment on the regulations at the July 13 Metropolitan and Economic Development Committee meeting, where the proposal could be advanced to the full council for a vote in August.

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Email Indianapolis City Hall Reporter Jordan Smith at JTSmith@indystar.com. Follow him on X @jordantsmith09 and Bluesky @jordanaccidentally.bsky.social.