‘Naked racial profiling’: Bitter Delaware officials lose appeal over surrendering wage records in illegal immigration probe

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Delaware will turn over employee wage records for 15 businesses suspected of illegally hiring undocumented immigrants after losing a fight in federal court to block the subpoenas, officials announced Friday.

Even so, Attorney General Kathy Jennings and Gov. Matt Meyer continued to sharply criticize the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts, arguing that the federal government is using subpoena powers to target immigrant communities and businesses.

“The court has spoken, and with no viable alternative before us the state must honor its ruling — but this was a fight worth losing on our feet,” Jennings said in a statement issued Friday. “This was not just a question of what the law demands, but of what our conscience permits.”

The dispute began 15 months ago when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sought records from the Delaware Department of Labor, including Social Security numbers and addresses of employees. The legal battle came to an end this week when the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia issued a one-sentence order that “denied” Delaware’s request to temporarily halt a lower court order to surrender the documents.

Last month, Delaware’s chief federal judge, Colm F. Connolly, denied the state’s bid to defy the subpoena, ruling that the subpoena was lawful. The state appealed, but its arguments didn’t gain any traction.

While Jennings and Meyer said the state will follow the law, both issued harsh remarks about President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration during his second term.

Jennings said proceedings in U.S. Circuit Court in Wilmington revealed that “anonymous tips” triggered the subpoenas from ICE investigators last year, and suggested that more subpoenas for employee records at other businesses could be coming.

“We cannot pretend that the legal question is narrowly limited to just a handful of employers and records,” she said.

“The context and intent of the policy behind it is inseparable from the demand itself. The federal government is using its subpoena authority as a fig leaf for naked racial profiling.”

Meyer has said that several of the businesses targeted have “Spanish-language names.” Most records have been sealed but the state has provided records that said they included a Mexican restaurant, a fencing company and the Perdue Agribusiness facility in Seaford.

“Federal overreach into state governments and immigrant communities needs to stop,” Meyer said in a statement. “We will not stop fighting against Trump Administration actions that hurt Delawareans and our businesses. We will not stop fighting bias and discrimination in our communities, even when it comes from the federal government.”

Jennings charged that the public has turned against Trump’s “immigration agenda, and with the violent crackdowns that have accompanied it, precisely because they have seen the rhetoric of public safety and border security give way to the targeting of families, workers, neighbors, and even American citizens who pose no threat to our communities.

“It is inhumane, destructive to the confidence of workers and small businesses alike in the State’s civil authority, and contrary to the moral code not only of the state’s leaders but of the American citizens who elected us. This cannot become who we are.”