‘Preposterous’: Delaware federal judge castigates state’s latest bid to withhold employee records in ICE probe

Delaware’s chief federal judge has again ordered the state to turn over records of 15 businesses suspected of illegally employing undocumented immigrants, calling arguments “baseless,” “frivolous” and “preposterous.”

Chief U.S. District Court Judge Colm F. Connolly issued his blistering opinion Friday, and the state immediately filed an emergency petition with the federal appeals court in Philadelphia to pause and ultimately overturn his order to produce the documents — including workers’ Social Security numbers and addresses — by Wednesday, May 13.

Essentially, Delaware is requesting the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to issue a temporary stay that would pause the order, pending the outcome of the state’s formal appeal that was filed in late April.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware has contended in U.S. District Court that the subpoena issued by U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement, or ICE, is valid and legal.

However, in a one-paragraph letter to the appeals court, prosecutors wrote that “the United States does not oppose a short administrative stay to permit the motion to be briefed and decided in an orderly but still expedited fashion.”

Gov. Matt Meyer has vowed to take every legal step possible in the 15-month battle over the records to “fight federal overreach and unlawful immigration enforcement” by the second Trump administration.

Meyer said last month that many of the 15 businesses suspected of illegally employing undocumented immigrants have “Spanish-language names.” Most of the companies’ names have been redacted from court documents.

Files the state provided to WHYY News identified three of them: Perdue’s AgriBusiness facility in downstate Seaford, as well as two upstate businesses — a Mexican restaurant and a fence company.

Neither Meyer, lawyers for the state, nor the federal government would respond to requests for comment on the latest developments in the legal saga.

Officials from ICE are seeking the companies’ wage records for the third and fourth quarters of 2024. They initially subpoenaed the records in February 2025, one month after President Donald Trump began his second term and vowed a vigorous and sustained crackdown on illegal immigration.

The Delaware Department of Labor did not produce the records. In April 2025, authorities issued another subpoena for them, and then went to court to enforce it, triggering the legal battle.

Connolly ruled last month that federal law permits ICE agents to subpoena the records and “clearly” overrides Delaware’s right to withhold them from disclosure in the criminal investigation.

“These are not close calls,” Connolly wrote in the opinion issued Friday, which denied the state’s bid for a stay.

In addition, Connolly’s opinion took great exception to one of the state’s continuing arguments — that producing the records could jeopardize the unemployment insurance fund solvency, because companies might stop filing required wage reports and paying unemployment taxes.

The state “still has not cited any competent evidence that supports the argument,” Connolly wrote.

The notion that companies would violate federal and state law “and subject themselves to potential fines and even incarceration” if the state complied with the subpoena “is preposterous,” Connolly wrote.

He added that Delaware’s claim that “the potential insolvency” of the system “is an actual and imminent harm that will result if it is compelled to produce 30 wage reports … is frivolous.”

Despite Connolly’s opinion, the state immediately doubled down on such arguments in its motion to the appeals court late Friday afternoon. The motion asserted that Delaware’s confidentiality rules take precedence over federal law, and that its bid for a stay “was likely to succeed” on its bid to avoid having to comply with the subpoena.

“Delaware would be irreparably harmed if it were compelled to disclose sensitive information in violation of its own laws,” state attorneys Jennifer Kate Aaronson and Ian Liston wrote. “Once such information sought is turned over, there would be no remedy that could be provided through an appeal. After all, ‘disclosure is a bell that cannot be unrung.’”