NEW YORK — A Manhattan judge was expected Friday to issue a ruling on a request for a temporary restraining order that would require the Trump administration to let federal funding resume for the construction of the Hudson River Tunnel project.

In arguments Friday, the New Jersey attorney general’s office said thousands of construction workers would be forced to walk off the job this weekend and abandon “literally a massive hole in the earth” if the Trump administration didn’t immediately release billions in federal funding toward construction of the new tunnel.

New York and New Jersey filed the suit against the Trump administration on Wednesday, alleging the government had jeopardized completion of the monumental project, which is slated to generate 90,000 jobs and boost the regional economy by billions, in an act of retribution against Trump’s perceived political enemies.

Shankar Duraiswamy, arguing for the New Jersey AG on Friday, urged the court to vacate and set aside the federal Department of Transportation’s decision to freeze the funds and halt a work stoppage.

Duraiswamy said the impacts of putting shovels down now would create overwhelming logistical and public safety issues.

“Project sites cannot simply be abandoned. There is literally a massive hole in the earth in North Bergen, New Jersey that must be secured,” Duraiswamy said. “There is a 1,600-ton tunnel boring machine … that cannot simply be left abandoned.”

Rattling off the potential for irreparable harm, the attorney said that demobilizing the project and then restarting it would significantly delay the overall timeline of the critical infrastructure project, or even torpedo the whole thing.

“Workers who have been laid off may find other work,” he said, adding that others may not sign up to come back, “unwilling to commit, given the uncertainty” of the situation.

Representing the government, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tara Schwartz from the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, argued that any disagreement over the funding was a contract issue to be decided between GDC and the feds — part and parcel with a suit brought by GDC in the Court of Federal Claims earlier this week.

But attorneys for the states argued that the injuries to New York and New Jersey were separate, as those states would be responsible for picking up the tab to secure the construction sites once GDC’s coffers run dry in the coming weeks.

Trump officials first announced a freeze on the funding last year in the hours after the government shutdown began, blaming New York’s supposed “unconstitutional DEI principles” in the selection of contractors and purported noncompliance with newly implemented contracting rules.

After Gateway officials demonstrated compliance, Trump said he was targeting the project because of its importance to Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and the White House’s press shop said Democratic lawmakers had not been “prioritizing the interests of Americans over illegal aliens.”

The News reported Thursday that the president, in recent negotiations, said he’d stop meddling with the project if Schumer advocated for plastering Trump’s name on Penn Station and Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C., a deal Schumer rejected.

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