ICE wants Delaware labor data, but state officials say that just won’t work

Julianne Murray, Delaware’s interim U.S. Attorney who was appointed by the Trump administration in July, took the state Department of Labor to court this month in an effort to force officials to hand over business records to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Murray asked the court to enforce an April subpoena issued by ICE for wage reports for 15 Delaware businesses. 

But Delaware is not the first state where the Trump administration has tried to access this information in hopes of furthering its immigration crackdown. 

ICE’s cross-country subpoena efforts align with the Trump administration’s broader strategy of using federal and state agency data to bolster its promised immigration enforcement push. 

On Aug. 9, the Internal Revenue Service began sharing sensitive taxpayer information with the Department of Homeland Security after DHS sent the IRS a list of 40,000 names of people who the department suspected of being undocumented immigrants. 

“The recent federal subpoena directed at the Department of Labor is precisely the kind of government intrusion that we have fought against.” Gov. Matt Meyer said in a written statement. “Hardworking Delawareans deserve to have their rights and privacy protected.” 

Murray declined to comment on the litigation. 

ICE’s data efforts reach Colorado, California

In Colorado, ICE has issued at least nine subpoenas to state agencies for private information about residents since President Donald Trump took office in January, according to reporting from the Colorado Sun.

In the subpoenas, ICE agents sought names, employment records and Social Security numbers from the Colorado departments of Labor and Employment, Public Health and Environment, and the Marijuana Enforcement Division with the Department of Revenue. 

In total, ICE sent seven subpoenas to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment asking for employment records from 2024, citing an ongoing human and narcotics trafficking investigation, according to the Colorado Sun. 

In the first four months of 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has charged more Delawareans with illegal reentry to the country than in all of 2024. | PHOTO COURTESY OF ICE

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In one subpoena, which was filed in April, ICE demanded the personal information of 35 Coloradans’ who are sponsors, or designated caretakers, of unaccompanied immigrant children from the state labor department.

The next month, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis ordered the labor department to turn over the records to ICE and comply with the subpoena. 

But following a whistleblower lawsuit filed in June, a Colorado judge ordered that Polis cannot force a state employee to hand over the data to immigration officials. 

It’s against Colorado law for state officials to share residents’ personal information with ICE unless it’s being used for a criminal investigation. One of the state laws restricting information sharing was signed by Polis himself, just weeks before the lawsuit was filed. 

ICE’s subpoena did not meet Colorado’s information sharing criteria, the judge ruled. 

In California, ICE subpoenaed the state’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants in May, seeking a trove of records to determine if undocumented immigrants received payments from the Social Security Administration. 

The program gives cash assistance to certain legal immigrants living with disabilities who are ineligible for Social Security payments because of their immigration status. 

Delaware subpoena case underway

Delaware Department of Labor officials received at least four subpoenas from ICE since February, said Jennifer-Kate Aaronson, an attorney who represented the department in an Aug. 6 hearing. 

Department officials complied with one ICE subpoena that sought information about a single individual, Aaronson added. She said that the state planned to fight against releasing the information sought by immigration officials in the April subpoena. 

Lawyers with the U.S. Attorney’s Office said that it was the first time Delaware officials had raised any concerns about the subpoenas since they were filed. 

The presiding judge set deadlines stretching into mid-September for both the department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office to submit legal arguments in the case, including whether to bring the businesses named in the subpoena to court.