USA: ADOPTED AND UNDOCUMENTED
NOVANEWS
He Grew Up Thinking He Was American — Until He Was Deported
Mauricio Cappelli, photographed in March 2018. Photo: Courtesy of Kurt Cappelli
Daniel A. Medina
The intercept
MAURICIO OVIEDO SOTO was 6 years old when a judge in a Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, circuit court officially recognized his adoption. With the stroke of a pen, he became Mauricio Cappelli, taking the surname of his new American father.
Nearly 32 years later, on March 12, 2018, Cappelli stepped off a commercial flight at Juan Santamaría International Airport in San José, Costa Rica, in the country of his birth. He was still processing the last 24 hours: Early that morning, officers entered his holding cell in a South Texas immigration detention center and told him he wo...