‘They will be exposed’: Delaware must surrender wage records for 15 businesses targeted by ICE investigation, federal judge rules

Delaware must surrender employee records for 15 businesses to immigration enforcement investigators, a federal judge ruled this week in a 14-month battle between Gov. Matt Meyer’s office and the Trump administration.

U.S. District Judge Colm F. Connolly, who was appointed to the court by President Donald Trump in 2018, ruled this week that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s subpoenas for the companies’ last two quarterly wage reports of 2024 are clearly “valid and enforceable.” Wage reports include payment data for employees as well as their Social Security numbers.

Investigators have said in court documents that the criminal probe, which began in February 2025 — just weeks after Trump began his second term — stemmed from tips that the 15 companies had illegally hired undocumented immigrants.

While many records in the Delaware federal court fight have been sealed, the state provided WHYY News with redacted copies of two subpoenas sent to Delaware Department of Labor in February and March 2025.

Those documents show that the businesses targeted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement include the Perdue AgriBusiness facility in Seaford and two upstate businesses — a  Mexican restaurant and a fence company. Meyer said this week that many of the 15 businesses have “Spanish language names.”

Officials at the Perdue plant, which specializes in grain processing and transportation, referred WHYY News to the company’s corporate offices in Salisbury, Maryland, but no one there responded to a request for comment.

The federal investigation is part of Trump’s unprecedented crackdown on illegal immigration across America. Large-scale raids and roundups by ICE in major cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis, where agents shot and killed two American protesters, have led to hundreds of thousands of deportations.

In a scathing 27-page opinion, Connolly soundly rejected Delaware’s argument that producing the records would undermine the willingness of employers to report wage and employee data to the state and could “pose a significant risk to the solvency” of the state’s unemployment insurance fund.

Connolly, Delaware’s chief federal judge, noted that, despite Labor Secretary LaKresha Moultrie’s “conclusory and unsubstantiated averments” that businesses would stop providing the required information, the state “cites no evidence to show that a Delaware employer would intentionally engage in this unlawful and risky activity. And I am neither willing nor able to adopt [Department of Labor’s] cynical view of the state’s employers.”

Connolly, who held a hearing on the issue this month, suggested it was laughable that the unemployment fund for laid-off workers could go broke if the subpoena was enforced and companies stopped contributing their required share. That argument, Connolly wrote, “does not pass the straight-face test.”

Connolly also wrote that the state’s other chief complaint — that ICE is pursuing “an intense agenda of immigration enforcement” — is not worth the time for his court to entertain.

“This is a political argument; not a legal one,” Connolly wrote, adding that U.S. District Court is “not the proper forum in which to air generalized grievances about the conduct of government. It would be wholly inappropriate for me to consider this line of argument, and I decline to do so.”

U.S. Attorney for Delaware Benjamin Wallace, whose office sought to enforce the subpoena after the state repeatedly ignored the request by ICE investigators, applauded Connolly for upholding the authority granted by Congress.

“Delaware’s state agencies have historically complied with federal subpoenas, as they are required to do by law,” Wallace told WHYY News on Thursday. “But here, a state agency refused to comply — not for legal reasons, but for political ones. That could not stand, so we sued to enforce the subpoena.”

Wallace added that Connolly “recognized the simple truth at the core of this case: federal law applies to everyone, whether they are a state or private entity, and whether they agree or disagree with the federal government’s policy priorities.”

‘We protect workers here. We do not set traps for them.’

Meyer decried the ruling and the ICE investigation during his monthly news conference and in a social media post.

Meyer, a first-term Democrat, told reporters that instead of addressing surging costs for food, gas, housing and health care, “the U.S. Department of Justice and Homeland Security is working to collect information on hard-working families and businesses just hoping to get by.”

The governor said his administration “will stand up and make sure that employment records are protected. This is not about public safety. It’s about turning worker information into a data pipeline for immigration enforcement, for ICE.”

“It’s un-American, and I want Delawareans to know that Delaware will have no part in it because the moment that workers fear their information will be used against them, our whole system of worker protection breaks down. We protect workers here. We do not set traps for them.”

Meyer said the state’s lawyers are reviewing their options, including an appeal to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “We will go to the fullest extent of the law to protect Delaware workers,” he said.

But unless the state appeals and wins, officials must produce the records, or face possible contempt proceedings.

Moultrie would not comment, nor would lawyers for the Attorney General’s Office, who fought the subpoena in court.

Charito Calvachi-Mateyko, an advocate for Latinos in Delaware, said immigrant communities are already living in fear, and the decision could cause many to quit their jobs.

“They will be exposed. They will be detained because now it will be on the record who they are, where they live, and the tax information will be there, everything,” Calvachi-Mateyko told WHYY News.

She said it’s likely “they will retreat from those jobs, but if they don’t and they are taken by ICE, just think what will be the impact on those businesses and in the lives of these people. They consume and they are a part of the economy.”

State Sen. Eric Buckson, a Dover-area Republican, said he empathizes with hard-working residents who might be affected by the ICE investigation, but urged the governor to follow the law.

“His decision is unambiguous,” Buckson said of the ruling by fellow Republican Connolly. “He uses some terms that are describing [the state’s] actions as silly or lacking standing, lacking substance.

“I think they lose their argument unless they don’t believe that you have to follow the law. When it suits you, you do, when it doesn’t, you don’t. And that’s what it appears that they’re trying to do.”