Bayonne Drydock to Pay $4M Over Illegal Immigrant Labor

Bayonne Drydock and Repair Corporation has agreed to pay more than $4 million to settle allegations that it employed illegal immigrants to work on U.S. Navy ships, federal prosecutors announced Thursday.

“This settlement resolves allegations that Bayonne Drydock improperly employed unauthorized aliens to work on Navy ships,” Acting U.S. Attorney and Special Attorney Alina Habba said in a statement.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, investigators found that from 2017 through 2020 Bayonne Drydock “utilized multiple subcontractors that were owned and/or controlled by Bayonne Drydock’s Risk Manager to perform work on government contracts, and that those subcontractors were employing individuals who were not authorized to work in the United States.”

Prosecutors said that even after the Department of Homeland Security issued a “Notice of Suspect Documents” in 2016, Bayonne’s risk manager “took affirmative steps to assist another subcontractor to employ unauthorized aliens, who continued to work on Navy ships.”

The settlement documents state that Bayonne Drydock “billed for the work of approximately 52 unauthorized alien employees on the Military Contracts.” Those contracts included repairs to the USS Watkins and the USS Gilliland.

The risk manager has already pleaded guilty to “a criminal charge of knowingly hiring and continuing to employ unauthorized aliens” under federal immigration law.

Bayonne Drydock will pay $4,043,810.56, including more than $2 million in restitution. While the company did not admit liability, the agreement requires it to cooperate with ongoing federal investigations and bars it from passing legal fees related to the case onto future government contracts.

The investigation was led by the Department of Homeland Security’s Newark Field Office and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, Northeast Field Office, and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark C. Orlowski.