Gia Giudice has a major “goal” in her budding legal career: having her dad Joe Giudice’s immigration status “reevaluated.”
Joe — who was deported to his native Italy in 2019 after spending three years in prison for fraud and another seven months in an ICE detention center — has been living in the Bahamas since 2021 to make seeing his family more convenient and cost-efficient.
But his eldest daughter, Gia, is determined to see her father back on American soil — even if for “temporary visitation.”
“We have such a big family, and no matter what the situation is, gathering all of us to go visit him [is hard]. Even though he did move to Bahamas for us, for him to be closer, for the flight to be easier … like, plane tickets are still crazy expensive, and especially when everybody has off around the holidays [and] the airlines jump the prices up,” the Rutgers University senior, 22, tells Page Six in an exclusive interview.
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“It is hard for everybody to see him, rather than just one person being able to come here, like during holidays or birthdays, would just be like a dream come true,” she adds, arguing that Joe, 50, was never “a flight risk” or “a threat to society.”
“I just feel like that if that whole aspect of it can get reevaluated, that maybe he could have a chance of coming back temporarily here and there.”
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Gia is majoring in criminal justice and minoring in sociology while balancing two internships: one with the public defender’s office of Middlesex County and another with immigration attorney Kathleen Martinez, whom Gia tells us got in touch with her by way of Joe.
“They were interested in possibly, potentially looking at his case again — just in the future, if they would be able to do anything for him,” she explains.
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“I was like, ‘Honestly, Dad, yeah. Like, this could be amazing,’” she continues. “And it’s been so cool, like, just seeing other immigration cases that are completely different than what my father’s [was] and just the situations that these people have been put through.
“And it really is so sad. But [if] I could do anything to help them or do anything, like, I would love to. And so it really has been a great experience so far.”
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Though Gia’s parents divorced in 2020 after 20 years of marriage, she says her mom, “Real Housewives of New Jersey” star Teresa Giudice, is fully supportive of her legal endeavors.
“She is, like, so proud of me. She just, she can’t believe she’s going to have a lawyer in the family,” the college student shares.
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As for how she juggles her full-time studies with having dual internships, being an active member of her Zeta Tau Alpha sorority, running a fashion line (g.g.est.2001) and making time for her relationship, Gia says it’s all about “writing down [her] schedule, preparing things in advance and getting sleep.”
She also “stop[ped] going out during the week.”
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And whenever she needs “a little refresher” from the craziness, Gia makes the drive back home to spend weekends with her boyfriend of more than two years, Christian Carmichael, her newlywed mother and her younger sisters: Gabriella Giudice, 18, Milania Giudice, 17, and Audriana Giudice, 13.
Gia tells us she already has another internship with a human relations law firm lined up for after her May 2022 graduation.