The husband of a star on the “Real Housewives of New Jersey” has been taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after being released from prison Thursday.
Joe Giudice, 46, now faces deportation to Italy after serving three years in a Pennsylvania federal prison for tax fraud.
Giudice is the husband of Teresa Giudice, who has appeared on the Bravo series since 2009. Teresa Giudice, 46, served 11 months in prison for a related conviction. She was released from prison in December 2015.
In October, a judge ordered Joe Giudice to be deported to his birth country, which he left when he was an infant, after his prison release. The couple’s lawyers have appealed the ruling. Joe Giudice, a permanent U.S. resident, will await the outcome of the appeal in an immigration detention center, according to E! News.
“His lawyers and his family are hopeful that justice will prevail and Mr. Giudice will return home to his wife and four daughters who love him and miss him,” his lawyer James Leonard Jr. said in a statement.
The couple has been married for almost 20 years and has four daughters together. At the season 9 series reunion which aired earlier this year, Teresa Giudice said she would remain in the U.S. with their daughters and divorce her husband if he’s deported.
“It’s like starting a whole new life,” she said of possibly moving her daughters to Italy. “And they’ve been through so much already. So, I mean, I’m not doing a long-distance relationship. I’m just not doing it. I want somebody with me every day. I know exactly what happens, I’m sure he’ll be with other women. It happens. We do the long-distance thing? It’s not going to work. I’ll be like, ‘Bye bye.'”
“Housewives” executive producer Andy Cohen asked her at the reunion if she had reached out to President Trump and his daughter and White House adviser Ivanka Trump about stopping the deportation. Teresa Giudice appeared on Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice” in 2012.
“Maybe I should,” Teresa Giudice said.
