Massachusetts Judge Reprimanded in High-Profile ICE Evasion Case

The Massachusetts judge who faced federal obstruction charges for helping a defendant evade ICE at her courthouse will receive only a public reprimand because she didn’t know about the plan to escape out the back door.

A hearing officer with the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct cited that lack of knowledge in his recommendation, released Thursday, that Judge Shelley Joseph receive a public reprimand instead of the indefinite suspension requested by the commission.

The high-profile April 2018 incident in a suburban Boston courtroom that led Joseph to face federal obstruction charges unfolded during President Trump’s first term. But it echoes the ongoing prosecution seven years later of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan for trying to prevent members of a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement task force from arresting a Mexican immigrant.

Like Dugan, Joseph faced federal obstruction charges and struggled in the courts to establish immunity in the case.

The charges against Joseph were dismissed in September 2022, after President Biden took office, as part of a deferred prosecution agreement that required her to refer her case to the state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct.

The reprimand recommendation from hearing officer Denis J. McInerney accompanied his finding that there was “no credible support” for the claim that she was complicit in a plan to get the man out of the courthouse without ICE knowledge by leaving through a door near the lock-up area in the courthouse.

But the report also found Joseph’s actions, including turning off recording equipment during the hearing, created an “appearance of impropriety and bias.”

McInerney, a former DOJ official currently senior counsel with Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, said in the report he would have recommended a private reprimand for Joseph “if not for the highly public nature of this matter of the past seven years.”

Joseph and the commission have 20 days to file objections to the report, then the commission has 90 days to propose a sanction based on the record and report that to the state’s Supreme Judicial Court.

Joseph’s attorney Thomas M. Hoopes of Libby Hoopes Brooks & Mulvey P.C. said in an emailed statement his client appreciates the “opportunity for a full, fair, and public hearing.”

“An impartial hearing officer has finally separated fact from politically and personally motivated fiction and found Judge Joseph had no role in the escape of the defendant from the Newton District Court engineered by the defense attorney, and she was completely honest with her supervisors,” Hoopes said.

Representatives for the commission weren’t available for comment.

The case is In re Joseph, No. OE-157, report released 11/6/25.