Delaware
Federal judge says Delaware labor officials must give data to ICE
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A federal judge in Wilmington has ordered the Delaware Department of Labor to hand over confidential state employer data to Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators.
On April 13, U.S. District Judge Colm Connolly ordered Delaware labor officials to comply with a federal immigration subpoena they had “ignored,” writing that the state lacked legal grounds to resist it and that its political arguments were “wholly inappropriate.”
The subpoena seeks wage reports and employee rosters containing confidential employee information for 15 businesses and sought by ICE investigators as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
Attorneys representing the state’s Department of Labor justified their noncompliance by arguing that local and federal regulators give state officials the authority to refuse federal investigators’ requests. They warned that allowing ICE to access employer data would discourage reporting and weaken the unemployment insurance program.
Local federal attorneys representing ICE argued the department is legally required to hand over the data targeting businesses that tip-line reports put under suspicion of employing undocumented individuals. In court filings, they said the state’s refusal to comply amounts to a legally unsound disagreement with federal immigration policy.
The arguments: Federal judge questions Delaware’s attempt to sidestep ICE subpoena
The contested subpoena was the last in a series that went unanswered by state labor officials during the first quarter of 2025. The subpoenas themselves are not legally confidential. However, Connolly, the presiding judge, sealed the final subpoena – the one at issue in the case – after federal officials sued the state to force compliance.
The state has produced redacted copies of some of the initial subpoenas to Delaware Online/The News Journal via a Freedom of Information Act request. Those early subpoenas targeted a Perdue facility in Seaford as well as a fencing company and a Mexican restaurant in northern New Castle County.
The final subpoena seeks data on the employees of 15 state businesses for the final two quarters of 2024 and is the subject of the current court wrangling. Connolly also denied the state’s argument that the document be unsealed so the businesses could exercise a right to fight the subpoena in court.
Breaking down the ruling
In assessing whether to enforce the subpoena, Connolly said the threshold question was whether it served a legitimate purpose, sought relevant information, and was not “unduly broad or burdensome.”
Connolly wrote that the investigation pertained to businesses suspected of employing undocumented people, which is in the scope of the agency that issued the subpoena, that the information sought is relevant to that inquiry and that it would not be “unduly burdensome” for the state to copy the 30 records sought by the subpoenas.
Connolly, who is the court’s chief judge and was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2018, also shot holes in what he described as the state’s “novel theory” that production of such records would endanger the state’s unemployment insurance program.
“I am neither willing nor able to adopt DDOL’s cynical view of the State’s employers,” Connolly wrote.
Editor’s note: The judge’s ruling can be read at the end of this article.
Having decided that, he turned to the question of whether the Department of Labor had proved the enforcement of the subpoenas would “undermine the integrity of the judicial process.”
The state argued that enforcement of the subpoena would step on confidentiality regulations in the state’s statue and that the subpoena flows from an “improper purpose” described as an “intense agenda of immigration enforcement.”
Prior coverage: Delaware to fight ICE, Trump administration demands for local businesses’ employee lists
Connolly ruled that the regulations do not override the subpoena power. He wrote that the state’s argument painting the subpoena as improper because of the current intensity around immigration enforcement is a “political argument, not a legal one.”
“This Court is not the proper ‘forum in which to air [DDOL’s] generalized grievances about the conduct of government,’ Connolly wrote. “It would be wholly inappropriate for me to consider this line of argument, and I decline to do so.”
Trump’s deportation agenda and Delaware
The legal fight is part of the front in Trump’s ever-expanding deportation agenda, which has seen the federal government seek new ways to leverage states’ and other datasets in its immigration roundups.
Trump, with the help of Congress, ballooned Immigration and Customs Enforcement funding nearly six-fold from $12 billion in the previous fiscal year to $75 billion in his budget legislation last year.
Recent: ICE detained a toddler in Delaware as arrests topped 500
The agenda has included workplace and neighborhood raids by masked ICE agents, arrests at jobs and courthouses, incidents resulting in deaths, fast‑tracked deportations and allegations of racial profiling and inhumane detention practices lacking due process.
In Delaware, ICE has more quietly doubled its number of detainments through October of last year compared with the year prior, rounding up more people in street arrests along with four children.
This is a breaking story and updates will follow.
Contact Xerxes Wilson at (302) 324-2787 or xwilson@delawareonline.com.
An investigation is underway after police said a man’s body was pulled from the Delaware River in South Philadelphia.
According to police, around 9 a.m. on Friday, April 17, 2026, emergency responders pulled an unidentified man from the Delaware River, near the Navy Yard. Medic’s pronounced the man dead at 9:11 a.m.
Léelo en español aquí.
SkyForce10 flew above as police and other first responders were on the scene.
NBC10
NBC10
Police are working to determine the circumstances of the incident and identify the man.
This is a developing story; check back here for updates.
DELAWARE, Ohio (WCMH) — A local fraternity is sticking by its core value of service, and having fun doing it.
With the help of their fellow students, teachers and sports teams, Phi Gama Delta at Ohio Wesleyan held a cereal box donation drive.
They had a goal of collecting 800 boxes for People in Need, Delaware County’s largest food pantry. To mark the occasion, organizers at the pantry and fraternity brothers set the boxes up in a line and knocked them over like dominoes.
“I think that’s such a great way to connect with people,” Zoe Borer, Capacity Building Associate at People in Need said. “Sometimes it’s very serious what we do, sometimes it’s great to be fun and that’s what today was, is showing us the fun side of how we can help our community.”
“Our goal is to do a good turn daily so every single day wake up and find something to help, help someone in the community, help someone on campus, help your mom or dad or whatever it may be,” said Phi Gama Delta brother Anthony Mordini.
People in Need serves 500 people every week with free groceries and served almost one million meals last year.
Delaware
Delaware state trooper injured in crash after allegedly losing control, hitting wall in Talleyville
Thursday, April 16, 2026 4:02PM
TALLEYVILLE, Del. (WPVI) — A Delaware State Police trooper is in the hospital after being injured in a crash Thursday morning.
Chopper 6 was over the scene at Rockland and Mount Lebanon roads in Talleyville, Delaware.
Action News has been told the trooper lost control and hit a stone wall.
He was reportedly trapped and had to be extricated.
There is no word on the trooper’s condition or what caused him to lose control.
Copyright © 2026 WPVI-TV. All Rights Reserved.
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