Teenage dream! Gia Giudice is off to prom amid her father Joe Giudice’s battle to stay in the country.
The businessman’s eldest daughter with wife Teresa Giudice shared a photo of herself all dolled up in a formfitting Cocos Chateau gown with beaded embroidery and spaghetti straps on Instagram on Thursday, May 23.
She paired the look with a matching corsage and pulled her long locks halfway back.
“Prom round one,” she captioned the shot.
Makeup artist Priscilla DiStasio also shared a picture of the gown, showing off its true white hue and the 18-year-old’s glowing makeup.
Gia’s formal affair comes amid Joe’s second deportation appeal. The entrepreneur, 47, who has been in ICE custody since his release from prison on March 14, was granted permission earlier this month to remain on U.S. soil until his case is reviewed by a judge. Twenty-seven former immigration judges were also approved to argue on his behalf.
Joe, who never became a U.S. citizen despite living in the country since infancy, was ordered to be deported to his native Italy by Judge John Ellington in October 2018. “Based upon the law, I find you deportable and ineligible for any kind of relief,” the judge said at Joe’s hearing.
The TV personality’s first appeal of the order was denied in April 2019. “The Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed the case on April 11, 2019,” a spokesperson for the Executive Office of Immigration Review told Us Weekly at the time.
Still, his lawyers vowed to fight on. “We have filed a stay with the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and will continue to fight to keep Mr. Giudice in the United States, the only country he knows, and reunite him with his wife and four daughters,” attorney James J. Leonard Jr. told Us in April.
Joe’s wife, 47, and daughters Gia, Gabriella, 14, Milania, 13, and Audriana, 9, have also been fighting on his behalf: All five women wrote heartfelt letters asking Judge Ellington to reconsider his order that same month.
Wrote Gia: “There have been so many things that my dad has missed … It affects us all. I am asking you from the bottom of my heart to please keep our father with us.”
The teenager also started a Change.org petition in April, which has since garnered upwards of 92,535 signatures, asking President Donald Trump to block Joe’s deportation.
Gia poured her heart out in the introduction, writing, “My father is not a danger to society, he is a warm loving man and I beg you sign our petition to give my father a second chance at being part of our lives and giving back to the community we live in once … again.”
Joe served 41 months in prison for the 41 counts of fraud, including mail, wire and bankruptcy that he pleaded guilty to in March 2014. He and Teresa also paid restitution to the IRS and New Jersey’s Department of Treasury.
