That web of support is precisely what local immigration attorney Huma Ahsan ran against. She applied for the Branch 1 appointment herself, she confirms to Isthmus Tuesday night while waiting for results to roll in at her Fitchburg home. She wasn’t selected.
“The governor’s going to appoint whoever he’s going to appoint. There’s nothing that you can do. It is unfettered discretion. They can appoint anybody to fill any vacant slot,” she says. “But here’s my point: The governor doesn’t own Branch 1 — the people do.”
Ahsan is the founder of Madison Immigration Law, which she has run since 2009, specializing in asylum cases, deportation defense, and DACA. She’s also a former chief justice of the Turtle Mountain Court of Appeals and formerly worked for the Great Lakes Indigenous Law Center at UW Law School and the Ho-Chunk Nation. She had been planning for another attorney to take over her practice if she won. Instead, she’s helping that attorney set up her own firm.