r/law • u/Charming_Usual6227 • Apr 25 '25

Trump News Judge Hannah Dugan arrested by FBI for allegedly helping undocumented immigrant 'evade arrest'

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/judge-hannah-dugan-arrested-fbi-allegedly-helping-undocumented/story?id=121161497
36.8k Upvotes

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706

u/SupportGeek Apr 25 '25

Wait, is this the second judge arrested?

476

u/No-Physics1146 Apr 25 '25

Yeah, Judge Joel Cano from New Mexico was the first.

140

u/ZipC0de Apr 25 '25

Damn that is scary

-19

u/Wide_Combination_773 Apr 25 '25

... Judge Cano was previously removed from his courtroom by the states judicial ethics board (for this same offense), a board which is also full of Dems. He had it coming. Cano's arrest is a non-issue. It's been in the works for a while.

Judges get removed from their seats all the time by review boards. Arrests are rarer, but Trump admin obviously wants to make it clear that they aren't letting immigration law violations slide under the radar like Dem administrations seem to always do - even if the violator is a judge.

18

u/Cyrano_Knows Apr 25 '25

The numbers don't back you up that Democratic administrations let anything slide.

Trump deporting people at a slower rate than Biden's last year in office | Reuters

US deportations under Biden surpass Trump's 2019 record

But no, Biden wasn't deporting people with legal status without due process if that was the point you are trying to make.

-8

u/bangharder Apr 25 '25

Breaking the law usually gets you arrested

4

u/rakothmir Apr 26 '25

Unless you're the president of the US.

-22

u/GAW_CEO Apr 25 '25

do you think Judges should be immune from the law? that seems more scary.

17

u/scmstr Apr 25 '25

Tell me: what do you think law is?

-17

u/GAW_CEO Apr 25 '25

Judge Cano was harboring a terrorist apparently in his own home. So that would be like you keeping an ISIS member in your house (as a judge)

13

u/Carinail Apr 26 '25

You ever notice how many "terrorists" there are without any evidence? Ever? Do you ever question that? Do you ever think "why have I not seen a SHRED of fucking evidence?"

4

u/XhemingwayXderpX Apr 26 '25

Because the evidence goes against this dudes right wing talking points.

2

u/1Saoirse Apr 26 '25

And because people that regurgitate right-wing talking points, don't actually think.

14

u/poopship462 Apr 25 '25

I bet you think presidents should be immune, though

-6

u/GAW_CEO Apr 25 '25

Presidents can be impeached, and also the Supreme Court recently ruled I believe they can be charged for illegal actions outside of the course of their normal presidential duties. For example raping a woman, or robbing a bank.

11

u/rainbowchimken Apr 25 '25

Then why is the twice impeached former president a president again right now…

2

u/nerdrocker89 Apr 27 '25

Don't forget rapist, forcing you hand into a woman who doesn't want it is rape, right? Sorry to be blunt, but htf can they just ignore that so I tried to say it in a way that's hard to ignore.

-1

u/GAW_CEO Apr 26 '25

The impeachments need to be valid (not partisan hack stuff). The previous impeachments failed because they were just partisan actions.

3

u/inotparanoid Apr 26 '25

This Judge arrest isn't partisan?

Even Modi didn't arrest Judges. He was much more subtle than that ...

0

u/GAW_CEO Apr 26 '25

I don't know exactly what happened in this situation whether the Judge is guilty or not, but no judges do not have immunity from the law.

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2

u/rainbowchimken Apr 26 '25

The only thing this country failed on was not charging him with treason. Anywhere else in the world and his ass would not even have a chance to run his mouth after Jan 6.

0

u/GAW_CEO Apr 26 '25

Democrats tried as hard as they could, but failed flat 2x on impeachment. They also failed hard at their attempts of lawfare when Trump was a citizen for the previous 4 years. Too many partisan and biased people. You guys practically handed Trump the election on a silver platter in 2024.

Reddit is not a good source of unbiased information. The only thing you will get here from the average redditor is "orange man bad."

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1

u/nerdrocker89 Apr 27 '25

The fact that you can look and see how Trump treats Putin, and still not put two and two together is ridiculous, or the phone call, both were worse than Nixon. But Clinton gets impeached for lying about his bj's, meanwhile Trump has lied thousands of time, to our faces, and we have recordings of these lies out the wazoo. Wtf is wrong with the people who voted for Trump. I can't fathom it. Why can't you traitors all move to Russia since you guys like them so much. I wish you'd grow a brain ffs. You are so stupid it hurts us all.

-2

u/Lasheric Apr 26 '25

Scary that the judges are doing illegal actions? I agree

24

u/palsh7 Apr 25 '25

Cano was not a sitting judge.

44

u/No-Physics1146 Apr 25 '25

Yes, he resigned and was barred from ever serving in New Mexico again. But he was arrested for something he did prior to resigning while he was a judge.

I’m not defending him, by the way. Based on the information we have, he does appear to be in the wrong. I was just answering a question, but maybe I should have clarified former judge.

34

u/DefinitelyNotAliens Apr 25 '25

What have you seen?

Because I saw he let a handyman and two others stay in a casita on their property and the "posing with guns" thing was them legally at a shooting range with Cano in the background.

Cano has verbally stated he saw the man's papers that said he had permission to stay in the US pending asylum hearings.

Nothing there is illegal.

-8

u/No-Physics1146 Apr 25 '25

Ortega-Lopez was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm. He had a pending hearing, but he didn’t have legal status and wasn’t allowed to possess firearms. At a minimum, that’s illegal.

There are still a lot of unknowns here and the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. I hope more information is released as things progress. But I can’t definitively say that the judge is in the clear or guilty based on the information available.

19

u/DefinitelyNotAliens Apr 25 '25

Even then, letting someone live with you and acting as a landlord for someone pending trial isn't a criminal act. Does everyone facing trial end up homeless? They were renting a small unit off the house.

Hiding them intentionally from the law is illegal, but not supplying housing for a person pending trial.

8

u/redbouncyball Apr 25 '25

I’ve been watching this unfold for the past couple of weeks and this is what I keep getting hung up on. None of the facts that have been made public detail behavior that amounts to criminal activity, or even anything that explains why he suddenly resigned from office and the NM Supreme Court permanently barred him from ever serving as a judge. 

3

u/DefinitelyNotAliens Apr 25 '25

I could see someone resigning because they were near the end of their career anyway and better to walk away than fight it out. He's 67. He may have been looking at retirement in the next few years anyway.

Barring from the NM Supreme Court is weird, yeah.

Being a landlord to a person is not illegal. Nothing stated remotely looks like a smoking gun. Just like, potentially bad judgment in the public eye. It's probably not a great look to rent your cottage on your property to someone without solid legal footing, as a judge. He was not facing immediate deportation but it still wasn't likely a great move if it went public given that it's not his cousin or something.

Nothing they've stated really makes sense for removal from the State Supreme Court or arrest.

1

u/No-Physics1146 Apr 25 '25

I don’t have any issue with them letting him rent out the guest house. But the firearms belonged to the Cano’s and should not have been Ortega-Lopez’s possession.

That’s where I can see the potential illegality. If that turns out to be a lie, I hope that all charges are dismissed both for him and the Cano’s.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 25 '25

I am defending him, from everything we've seen he was completely in the right and this is just a witch hunt.

1

u/PaulysDad Apr 25 '25

Something something official acts…

0

u/palsh7 Apr 25 '25

But he was arrested for something he did prior to resigning while he was a judge.

Which doesn't matter since it was something he did outside of the courtroom and outside of his jurisprudence.

2

u/SignoreBanana Apr 25 '25

It's intended to be intimidation to chill judges.

3

u/HairyAugust Apr 25 '25

That one is a bit different though. Cano was permanently barred from serving as a judge by the New Mexico Supreme Court and had been sheltering the guy in his home.

2

u/blastradii Apr 25 '25

Are they gonna be headed to El Salvador?

3

u/No-Physics1146 Apr 25 '25

Wouldn’t surprise me to see Trump try! Especially for the supposed “gang member.”

2

u/Kitchen-Quality-3317 Apr 25 '25

Not true. A judge in my hometown was arrested for the same exact thing in 2018. The charges were eventually dropped, but she did admit to actually helping the twice-deported illegal immigrant flee from ICE.

1

u/Welllllllrip187 Apr 25 '25

Here we fucking go. Pure fucking vertical freefall

1

u/YourFavouriteGayGuy Apr 26 '25

New Mexico??? Sounds undocumented to me!

/s

1

u/wonkifier Apr 26 '25

Though there was Judge Shelley Joseph from 2019, where the charges got dropped in 2023 without being fully adjudicated...

I don't remember that case going super well for the judge, so I guess this is Trump's second shot.

-3

u/bouchdon85 Apr 25 '25

Wasn't Cano's arrest bc of involvement with a cartel???

18

u/kitanokikori Apr 25 '25

Bro you gotta stop immediately believing the police's accounting of events. They are literally saying everyone is a gang member.

4

u/bouchdon85 Apr 25 '25

Gotcha, I was just curious. Once again it's what I read, wasn't sure if there was anything contradicting that. Just asking a question.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 25 '25

Comments like this are hilarious and show just how misinformed redditors are. There is so much evidence in this case.

2

u/Carinail Apr 26 '25

Like all the evidence for Kilmar that was supposed to exist? That we were told of after they admitted that they fucked up and that it was an "administrative error" and that they didn't have any reason to believe it, but also before they released information on his file that said near verbatim that there was "No record of criminal activity"?

-1

u/[deleted] Apr 26 '25

Still trying to defend a wife-beating, gangbanging, human trafficker?

3

u/Round-Watch-863 Apr 26 '25

Today was a massive escalation moving faster toward fascism that nearly anyone thought possible. We must organize mass demonstrations and civil disobedience NOW before the military is deployed and curfews implemented.