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Wedding at Point of No Return

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--To U.S. immigration officials, it was more than a borderline case. Armed with a visitor’s visa, Marcello Fontana, 25, of Italy entered the United States to marry Erena Apolloni, 21, of Detroit. But he made a mistake: He attended a bachelor party in Ontario, Canada, and was barred from returning to the United States for his wedding because, the INS said, he violated terms of his visa. While his crestfallen bride waited at St. Anne’s Roman Catholic Church in Detroit, Fontana committed his second mistake: He tried to sneak across the border in the trunk of a car--but immigration officials again caught him and turned him back. So the Apolloni family, along with a priest, headed for Canada, where a marriage ceremony was held in a Windsor park. “In my heart and in my eyes they are married. They just have to make it legal,” said Giovanna Apolloni, the bride’s mother. “He is my son-in-law.” Meanwhile, Lonnie McDaniel, deputy director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Detroit, said Fontana had filed a petition in Milan, enabling him to enter the United States, marry and remain. But, she said, he came before getting proper authorization. As of Monday, the “newlyweds” were in Windsor trying to make their union legal to church and state.

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