A Wisconsin judge was convicted late Thursday of obstruction for aiding a Mexican immigrant in avoiding federal capture, though she was cleared of charges related to concealing him.

After six hours of deliberations that extended into the evening, a jury delivered a mixed verdict against Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan, marking a significant setback for the sitting judge.

Judge Dugan now faces a potential five-year prison sentence for obstruction, the more severe of the charges; however, first-time offenders seldom receive the maximum penalty.

The unusual charges emerged in the context of the Trump administration’s stringent immigration enforcement, which has frequently placed courts at the center of contentious legal disputes over aggressive deportation measures.

Prosecutors argued that Dugan attempted to thwart the arrest of Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, who was in the U.S. without permanent legal status, by directing him through a back exit of her courtroom after discovering that a federal immigration task force intended to detain him at the Milwaukee County Courthouse.

A Mexican national who has since been deported, Flores-Ruiz was set to appear in Dugan’s courtroom on three misdemeanor counts of battery. Six agents and officers waited outside the room to arrest him once the hearing was over. 

A member of the team testified Tuesday that he remembered thinking they were in a “bad spot” because of Dugan’s directive to head toward the chief judge’s office. The team had to chase Flores-Ruiz down through traffic instead of safely arresting him in the building, he and other arresting officers said. 

Dugan’s defense attorney countered that the judge did not obstruct officers from arresting Flores-Ruiz in the public hallway that the private corridor led to and suggested that her directive to seek out the chief judge was an effort to abide by a draft courthouse policy telling court officials to refer immigration agents planning arrests there to superiors. 

Dugan was arrested in April inside the courthouse where she worked and indicted in May on the two federal charges of obstruction and concealing an individual from arrest.  

Prosecutors said during closing arguments that Dugan’s actions followed frustration with immigration arrests in courthouses and amounted to an intentional effort to give Flores-Ruiz an escape hatch and buy him time to use it.  

“A judge does not have absolute authority to do whatever she wants whenever she puts on her robe,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Brown Watzka, as reported by AP.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Rick Frohling told the panel that the case was not a “referendum on ICE” but rather about “preserving the rule of law.” 

But Dugan’s attorneys urged jurors to act as a check on “government overreach,” contending that the “top levels of government” sought to influence the case. The Trump administration has branded Dugan as an “activist judge.” 

Defense attorney Jason Luczak insisted that Dugan, who did not testify in her own defense, would not risk her career to help Flores-Ruiz slip away. 

 “Give me a break,” he said, according to AP.