Illegal to Lose Most of $59K
Illegal immigrant in Stuart who earned $59K over 10 years likely will lose most of it

Megan V. Winslow

Washing dishes, it took Pedro Mariano Zapeta a decade to earn $59,000 cash.

But it took a mere day for the undocumented immigrant to lose it to airport customs officials, who thought he was smuggling drug money back to his native Guatemala.

So began an almost two-year battle between Zapeta and the U.S. government over whether he is legally entitled to the money after failing to declare that he was carrying more than $10,000 in U.S. currency out of the country, as the law requires. In January, a U.S. District Judge ruled the government could keep all the money but $10,000, which is to be returned to Zapeta. The case is under appeal.

And last week, an immigration judge told Zapeta, 39, he would be deported if he did not voluntarily leave the U.S. by Jan. 24, and there is nothing more his immigration attorney, Marisol Zequeira of John T. Kennedy’s office in Stuart, can do.


“We went as far as we could go in terms of studying different possibilities,â€