(The Center Square) – The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty’s president is out with a new piece that says Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan violated one of the most basic principles of our Democracy if the federal charges against her are true.
“The issue is institutional fidelity,” Esenberg wrote on X Wednesday. “A ‘independent judiciary’ does imply an unfettered power to do whatever a judge thinks is ‘right.’”
Esenberg and WILL’s Dan Lennington co-wrote a piece for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel where they talk about how Dugan is accused of helping a Mexican foreign national charged with battery escape her courtroom to avoid ICE agents.
“There is a time and a place to express opposition to President [Donald] Trump’s immigration policies or the way some of them are being executed,” the two wrote in their op-ed. “But respect for democracy includes respect for the laws that our elected representatives have enacted. It means honoring the rule of law and not simply ignoring laws that we do not like.”
Esenberg has been critical of Dugan since her arrest last week, but not because of her opposition to President Trump’s deportation plans. Instead, Esenberg has criticized Dugan for injecting her politics into her role as a local judge.
“It’s only one case, but a state court judge obstructing federal law enforcement is interposition. It’s not normal. It’s not proper,” Esenberg wrote Monday. “I understand that [the] judge may not like border enforcement or the way in which the administration goes about it. But that’s not her call.”
In his Wednesday tweets, however. Esenberg also criticized Trump’s handling of immigration rulings from the court that the president disagrees with.
Ironically, overstepping this way in not unlike what the Trump is doing in ignoring due process requirements. He thinks that the presence of millions of people in the country unlawfully is, to use Dugan’s word regarding immigration enforcement, ‘absurd’,” Eseberg wrote. “He thinks that the limitations on his power to do what the believes to be right are unjust. But our democracy doesn’t work that way.”
Dugan is looking at two federal charges, including one felony.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday suspended her but made a point to say that Dugan is on paid administrative leave.
