PROVIDENCE — A judge yesterday refused to stop Governor Carcieri’s administration from canceling more than two dozen contracts with a cleaning company whose workers were arrested during immigration raids at state courthouses.

Alleging that they had become the victims of politics, the owners of TriState Enterprises had sought a temporary restraining order, but Superior Court Judge Patricia A. Hurst rejected the request during a hearing yesterday afternoon.

“I’m being asked to do more than maintain the status quo,” Hurst said. “I’m being asked to require the state to open its doors to employees whose status can’t be verified.” The judge said she would not do that.

TriState is co-owned by Anthony DeSimone, the brother of state Rep. John DeSimone, D-Providence, and in the motion their lawyer-brother Thomas DeSimone filed in court yesterday, he sought to halt the cancellation of 26 cleaning contracts that extend from the University of Rhode Island campus to motor vehicle registries to state transportation headquarters on Smith Hill to the National Guard’s command readiness center. The executive branch contracts were worth $732,891 to the company last year alone; the courthouse cleaning contracts, another $493,325.

The state served notice Thursday of its intention to cancel the contracts at 11:55 p.m. the next day. The action was attributed by Department of Administration Director Jerome Williams to the state’s findings during an internal review of the state’s relationship with TriState and a second company, Falcon Maintenance, whose employees were arrested and charged with being in this country illegally as they were leaving work at six state courthouses last Tuesday. The state cited “clear and immediate danger to the public interest” as a justification for the mid-contract terminations.

The status of the court-cleaning contracts remains uncertain. In the courts alone, the two companies had a reported 63 employees. Those contracts are still under review, according to court spokesman Craig Berke. Among the findings of the Carcieri administration review: the companies had been reporting many fewer employees to the Department of Labor and Training than they had told the state they had available.

Falcon told state labor officials it had eight employees in January and five in both February and March and TriState reported having only six employees during each of those months, when the state “has reason to believe” both companies had “significantly more employees than that,” the state’s acting purchasing agent, Lorraine Hynes, wrote Williams in letters made public last week.

Beyond that, Hynes alleged in a memorandum to Williams that neither company produced requested evidence they had enrolled — though both told the state they had — in the E-Verify program for confirming a prospective employee’s immigration status, or that they had required their employees to prove they are who they say they are and are eligible to work in this country. In his court filing, Thomas DeSimone argued that the contract required the state to provide 30 days’ notice of termination.

He argued that the state has always had the right under the contract to ask TriState to replace personnel, but not cancel the contracts if it is not satisfied with them. He also stated that: “there were only two detained workers out of 70 workers who worked in the defendants’ buildings.” (DeSimone did not respond to a request to elaborate on this statement.)

He also accused the Carcieri administration of doing a sudden turnabout after acknowledging that “some time would be needed” to obtain all of the information the state requested, including the names, birthdates, Social Security numbers and photo identifications of its workers.

According to TriState, Williams advised the company’s owners during a July 21 meeting “that he was satisfied with the work [the company] had been doing over the past 12 years,” and “never gave [the company] any indication that it was in non-compliance with any of the terms and provisions of the contracts.”

Based on “information and belief,” DeSimone alleged the subsequent cancellations were “politically motivated as a result of the news stories printed and telecast in the recent past.”

Cracking down on illegal immigrants has been one of the signature issues that Republican Carcieri has hammered on both local talk radio and the national airwaves on The O’Reilly Factor and Lou Dobbs’ show. But when asked yesterday whether the cancellations were driven in any way by politics, Carcieri spokeswoman Amy Kempe said: “Absolutely not…. This decision was made after a thorough internal review by the Department of Administration.”

From the bench, Hurst yesterday said it would have made no sense for TriState to intentionally employ undocumented workers to do the work for the state. “It would be like shooting oneself in the foot,” she said. “Even the most conscientious employer can be duped.”

Hurst said the company was unable to fully meet the state’s demands that it verify its workers’ immigration status because immigration officials had seized many of the company’s records.

But Hurst said she understands the state’s concern about having undocumented workers in buildings that contain “sensitive information.”

While many undocumented workers may be honest, she said, “Seemingly, Security 101 would require the state” to check on the immigration status of workers in state buildings.

While the contract calls for 30 days’ notice before termination, Hurst said state purchasing regulations allow for immediate termination under certain circumstances.

The Department of Administration was represented at the hearing by lawyers Michael D. Mitchell and Cheryl Asquino. TriState’s lawyer, Thomas R. DeSimone, said the Department of Administration terminated the contract “in a hasty manner, and they didn’t do it properly. I think they did it because of the newspaper articles.”

DeSimone said TriState has been working for the state for 12 years and has done nothing illegal.

kgregg@projo.com