Federal judge hands Biden's home state a loss in battle of ICE access to labor data
A federal judge ordered Delaware officials to turn over confidential employer and employee data to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), delivering a legal defeat to former President Joe Biden’s home...
By Fox News · Fox News
A federal judge ordered Delaware officials to turn over confidential employer and employee data to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), delivering a legal defeat to former President Joe Biden ’s home state in a dispute over immigration enforcement. U.S. District Judge Colm Connolly ruled that the Delaware Department of Labor (DDOL) must comply with a federal subpoena seeking wage reports and employee records from 15 businesses as part of an investigation into the suspected hiring of undocumented workers. Delaware officials argued they could refuse the request and warned that compliance would harm worker reporting and state programs, but Connolly rejected that position. "This is a political argument; not a legal one," Connolly wrote. "This Court is not the proper ‘forum in which to air [DDOL's] 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." DOJ SUES NEW JERSEY OVER EXECUTIVE ORDER LIMITING ICE COOPERATION, EXPANDING SANCTUARY STATUS The records include employees’ names, Social Security numbers and wages reported to the state as part of its unemployment insurance system. Federal investigators said the records will help identify potentially fraudulent Social Security numbers, compare reported employees to workers observed on-site and detect off-the-books labor. Connolly, a Trump-appointed judge , wrote that the subpoena was lawful, relevant to a legitimate investigation and not overly burdensome for the state to fulfill. The subpoena seeks 30 records covering two quarters for the 15 businesses, which the judge said would not be burdensome for the state to produce. He also dismissed Delaware’s argument that sharing the data would harm its unemployment insurance system, calling the claim unsupported. "I am neither willing nor able to adopt DDOL’s cynical view of the State’s employers," Connolly wrote. FEDERAL JUDGE WHO ORDERED NO WARRANTLESS ICE ARRESTS IN…