Joe Giudice‘s lawyer requested that he be released from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainment center (ICE) in Pennsylvania to spend time with his family before his pending deportation decision, but on Sept. 20, a judge denied his request, according to People. The 47-year-old Real Housewives of New Jersey star has been staying in ICE custody since Mar. and was hoping to return to his New Jersey home with wife Teresa Giudice, 47, and their four daughters, Gia, 18, Gabriella, 15, Milania, 14, and Audriana, 10, before he finds out whether or not he has to return to his home country of Italy. The ruling has understandably caused Joe some serious distress.
“Joe is extremely disappointed,” James J. Leonard, the Giudice family attorney, told the outlet in a statement. “He spent the last six months in a cage not able to hug or kiss his wife or daughters when they came to visit him. We treat animals in shelters better than we treat human beings in these ICE facilities.”
Joe’s potential deportation distress came in Oct., when an immigration court ruled to deport him after he finished a 41-month prison sentence for mail, wire and bankruptcy fraud, which derived from being indicted in 2013. Although he has been in America since he was a child, he was born in Italy and never obtained American citizenship. If immigrants are convicted of a “crime of moral turpitude” or an “aggravated felony” they are in danger of being deported, according to U.S. law, and this is exactly what’s happening to Joe.
Joe has appealed the deportation decision more than once but they were all denied, and he is now waiting on the decision of his final appeal.