Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan will go on trial in December for allegedly helping an illegal immigrant evade federal immigration authorities, a federal judge said on Wednesday.

Dugan’s trial in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin will be held on Dec. 15 in a federal courthouse in Milwaukee, while jury selection will be held on Dec. 11 and 12. The trial was originally scheduled for July 21, but that date was scrapped after Dugan filed a motion to dismiss the case, claiming she was immune from the criminal obstruction charges filed against her by the Justice Department.

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The indicted Milwaukee judge is accused of allowing Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, an illegal immigrant who appeared before her court in April, and his lawyer to exit her courtroom via a back door after federal immigration agents appeared at the courthouse to arrest him. Flores-Ruiz was arrested by federal authorities shortly after leaving the courthouse through the back door, while Dugan was arrested in a highly publicized fashion roughly a week later.

Dugan has pleaded not guilty to the two obstruction charges filed against her. The indicted judge’s lawyers claimed she had a form of judicial immunity by invoking previous court decisions, including the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Trump v. United States, which found that presidents have “presumptive immunity” for official acts and no immunity for unofficial acts.

A federal magistrate judge brought in to evaluate Dugan’s immunity claims recommended that her motion to dismiss the case be denied, a ruling U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman adopted last week.

“There is no basis for granting immunity simply because some of the allegations in the indictment describe conduct that could be considered ‘part of a judge’s job.’ As the magistrate judge noted, the same is true in the bribery prosecutions, concededly valid, where the judges were prosecuted for performing official acts intertwined with bribery,” Adelman wrote in his ruling last week.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT ESCAPE CASE AGAINST JUDGE HANNAH DUGAN WILL PROCEED: FEDERAL JUDGE

With the motion to dismiss denied, the high-profile case is back on track for a trial in three months.

Dugan was suspended from her duties as a Milwaukee County circuit judge by the Wisconsin Supreme Court shortly after she was federally charged earlier this year. Dugan’s charges have a maximum sentence of six years in prison and a $350,000 fine if convicted.