A federal judge just handed Delaware a stinging defeat in what amounts to a masterclass in why states can’t simply ignore federal law when it doesn’t suit their politics. U.S. District Judge Colm Connolly ordered the Delaware Department of Labor to hand over confidential employer and employee data to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, cutting through the state’s resistance like a hot knife through butter.
The irony here is thick enough to choke on. This is Joe Biden’s home state, the place he represented for decades, now getting smacked down for trying to obstruct immigration enforcement under the very laws Biden himself once supported. Delaware officials wanted to keep wage reports and employee records from 15 businesses away from ICE investigators who are looking into suspected hiring of undocumented workers. They claimed compliance would somehow harm worker reporting and state programs. Judge Connolly wasn’t buying it.
“This is a political argument; not a legal one,” he wrote, and honestly, that’s the entire ball game right there. Delaware wasn’t making a legal stand. They were making a political one, dressed up in legal clothing. The judge saw through it immediately and refused to turn his courtroom into a theater for what he called “generalized grievances about the conduct of government.”
The records ICE wants include names, Social Security numbers, and wages that employers report to the state as part of Delaware’s unemployment insurance system. Federal investigators need this information to identify fraudulent Social Security numbers, match reported employees to workers actually seen at job sites, and detect off-the-books labor. You know what? That sounds like basic law enforcement to anyone not trying to score political points with the open borders crowd.
Judge Connolly, appointed by President Trump, made clear the subpoena was lawful, relevant to a legitimate investigation, and not overly burdensome. We’re talking about 30 records covering two quarters for 15 businesses. Delaware’s labor department was acting like ICE had demanded the moon when they’d really just asked for some paperwork the state already possessed.
What really grates here is Delaware’s argument that sharing this data would somehow damage its unemployment insurance system. The judge dismissed this claim as unsupported, and he went further, writing that he was “neither willing nor able to adopt DDOL’s cynical view of the State’s employers.” Translation: stop assuming every business in Delaware is going to collapse because the federal government wants to enforce immigration law.
This ruling matters beyond Delaware’s borders. States across the country have been playing this game, using every bureaucratic trick in the book to obstruct federal immigration enforcement. They’ve turned sanctuary policies into a religion, treating cooperation with ICE like some kind of moral failing rather than what it actually is, which is following the law.
The federal government is moving to expand immigration enforcement, and state resistance is crumbling in courtrooms where judges actually care about the law instead of political fashion. Delaware officials didn’t just resist the subpoena. They ignored it completely, failing to respond even after receiving it. That’s not principled opposition. That’s contempt for the legal process.
Limited government doesn’t mean no government. It means government that operates within its proper sphere and follows the Constitution. Immigration enforcement is explicitly a federal responsibility, not something states get to veto based on their preferred political narrative. When Delaware tries to block ICE from doing its job, they’re not standing up for workers or protecting vulnerable people. They’re obstructing justice and making it easier for businesses to exploit illegal labor, undercutting American workers in the process.
The free market works when everyone plays by the same rules. Businesses that hire undocumented workers off the books aren’t competing fairly. They’re cheating, and they’re driving down wages for legal workers who don’t have the luxury of being paid under the table. Delaware’s resistance to this investigation protects those cheaters at the expense of honest employers and American workers.
This decision is a win for the rule of law and a reminder that states can’t simply refuse to cooperate with legitimate federal investigations because they disagree with current policy. Delaware lost this fight, and they deserved to lose it.
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