Delaware
Federal judge says Delaware labor officials must give data to ICE
What to know about jury duty in Delaware
Here are some tips and information about what to do when you receive a jury summons in the mail in Delaware.
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.
A shooting in Delaware County helped police solve a 2018 murder that happened in Cheltenham Township, officials said Wednesday.
Jihad Henderson, 38, of Philadelphia, was charged with murdering 29-year-old Rithina Torn in a road rage shooting in 2018 in Cheltenham Township, officials from Montgomery and Delaware counties announced.
Henderson was already in prison when he was charged with murdering Torn on Oct. 15, 2018, at the intersection of Dewey Road and Front Street in Cheltenham Township.
In 2024, Henderson was arrested in a shooting outside a Target in Springfield Township, Delaware County. He was convicted on several charges by a jury in the shooting, and that incident led to law enforcement charging him with Torn’s murder.
When the 2018 shooting happened in Cheltenham Township, one fired cartridge casing (FCC) was recovered from the scene and entered in the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN), officials said. The NIBIN compares ballistic evidence from recovered firearms and shootings across the United States and notifies law enforcement of any potential leads.
In November 2024, the Montgomery County Detective Bureau was notified that an FCC recovered from the shooting outside Target in Springfield was a potential match for Torn’s murder, officials said.
An investigation by two Montgomery County ballistics and firearms experts found that the bullets from the 2018 and 2024 shootings were fired by the same Glock .40 caliber handgun owned by Henderson, according to officials.
“This arrest is a testament to the power of inter-agency cooperation and our being able to help our colleagues in Montgomery County get justice for Rithina Torn. That would never have been done without the trust, respect and dialogue between our two offices,” Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse said in a statement.
Henderson will be sentenced in the Delco shooting on June 29. He’s awaiting arraignment on first-degree and third-degree murder charges in connection with Torn’s murder. A preliminary hearing will be scheduled at a later date.
Delaware
Sussex County Land Trust Announces Delaware 250 Celebration at Rocking the Docks – Milford LIVE! – Local Delaware News, Kent and Sussex Counties
“Stars Over Sussex” will bring live music, fireworks, food vendors, and a drone show to the Lewes waterfront on July 2 for Delaware 250. (Photo courtesy of Sussex County Land Trust.)
The Sussex County Land Trust announced plans for “Stars Over Sussex,” a Delaware 250 celebration scheduled for July 2, 2026, at the Cape May–Lewes Ferry Terminal in Lewes.
The waterfront event, organized in partnership with Rocking the Docks and Delaware 250, will feature live music, fireworks, food vendors, and a drone light show commemorating America’s 250th anniversary.
Organizers said the event will serve as Sussex County’s signature Delaware 250 celebration ahead of Independence Day festivities.
The evening’s entertainment will include a performance by Fleetwood Macked, a Fleetwood Mac tribute band appearing as part of the Rocking the Docks summer concert series. The event will conclude with a coordinated fireworks and drone show over the Lewes waterfront highlighting patriotic themes, Delaware history, and Sussex County’s coastal heritage.
Ticketed viewing areas will be available at the ferry terminal, though organizers noted the fireworks and drone show will also be visible from several public locations around Lewes, including Lewes Beach, Grain On the Rocks, and nearby waterfront areas.
“This partnership allows us to create something far larger and more impactful than we could independently,” said Sara Bluhm. “By bringing together Rocking the Docks, Delaware 250, community sponsors, and conservation supporters, we’re building a truly unique celebration that reflects the spirit of Sussex County and America’s 250th birthday.”
According to organizers, the drone light show will incorporate synchronized formations and animated imagery tied to patriotic themes, Delaware’s role as The First State, and local coastal culture.
The Sussex County Land Trust also recognized Dogfish Head as one of the event’s early supporters.
“Dogfish Head continues to step up for Sussex County in meaningful ways,” said Bluhm. “Their partnership and early commitment helped us elevate the vision for this event from the very beginning.”
Additional sponsorship opportunities remain available for businesses and organizations interested in supporting the event, according to organizers.
The Sussex County Land Trust expects the celebration to draw thousands of attendees from Delaware and surrounding states as part of the region’s July Fourth holiday events.
Sara Uzer is a journalist from Sussex County with more than 15 years of experience as a writer, editor, and community advocate. She started her career in Washington, DC and has lived in Sussex County for the past five years.
Corporations, partnerships, trusts, limited liability companies, and other “artificial entities” have the right to vote in Delaware elections under some circumstances, a judge said in a novel ruling Tuesday.
Judge Craig A. Karsnitz rejected an ACLU challenge to a charter permitting voting in local elections by the entities that own most of the property in the Town of Fenwick Island, one of several municipalities in the state with similar provisions. Karsnitz dismissed the lawsuit from Delaware’s Superior Court, citing “the principle of one person/entity/one vote.”
“Visions of faceless large corporations or even HAL controlling a small town are frightening and …
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