A jury has convicted two men of human smuggling charges after an Indian family froze to death attempting to cross the Canada-US border.
After a brief deliberation on Friday, a jury in Fergus Falls, Minnesota delivered the verdict in the case against Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, 29, an Indian national who used the alias “Dirty Harry”, and Steve Shand, 50, an American from Florida. Prosecutors say the pair were part of a broader criminal enterprise that helped migrants cross from Canada into the United States.
During the five-day trial, the court heard details of the tragic crossing attempt in January 2022, when Vaishaliben Patel, 37; her husband, Jagdish Patel, 39; their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi; and their three-year-old son, Dharmik were left to fend for themselves during a blizzard.
On a day when temperatures dipped to -23C and punishing winds swept across the prairie landscape, border officials first suspected something was amiss when they received a tip from a snowplow driver, who had helped free Shand’s van from a ditch. Shand had been spotted in the area multiple times in recent days.
Officers pulled Shand over as he attempted to cross the border in North Dakota. His story, that he was bound for Winnipeg, confused the agents, given that he was on a rural country road nowhere near the route to the Manitoba capital. Inside the van, they found two Indian nationals with Shand. They later found five more people wandering a field, disoriented and freezing.
Border patrol agent Christopher Oliver told the court one woman was slipping in and out of consciousness from hypothermia and her hand “felt like a chicken breast that had just been taken out of the freezer”.
He realized more could be trapped in the deadly storm. He asked Shand if there were others.
“People will die if you don’t tell me the truth,” he told Shand. Shand said there was no one else.
Daniel Huguley, a US border patrol agent, told the court his “heart sank” when he looked inside a backpack one of the migrants was carrying.
“First thing I saw … was that diaper.” All of the people intercepted were adults.
Hours later, officers found the bodies of Jagdish and Vaishaliben Patel, and their two children Vihangi and Dharmik just meters from the border. Jagdish was still holding Dharmik in his arms.
Lured by the promise of a better life, the four left India on 10 January and landed in Toronto two days later. Patel called his father and cousin back at home to tell them it was cold, but they were all fine and staying in a hotel.
Six days later, the young family arrived in the Manitoba town of Emerson, clad in brand new coats and gloves. They probably believed they were prepared for what locals know is a treacherous journey during the depths of winter.
Soon after their bodies were discovered Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, described it as a “mind-blowing tragedy”.
Yash Patel, one of the migrants who paid the smugglers for access to the border, told the court the group was told to exit the van and walk in a straight line until they found a van on the US side.
Patel, who is unrelated to the family that died in the cold, walked with the group for only a few minutes until the blinding snow and dim light caused him to separate from the others. It wasn’t until nearly six hours laster that he found Shand’s van, which was stuck in snow.
Defense attorneys were pitted against each other, with Shand’s team arguing that he had been unwittingly roped into the scheme by Patel. Patel’s lawyers, the Canadian Press reported, said their client had been misidentified. They said “Dirty Harry”, the alleged nickname for Patel found in Shand’s phone, is a different person. Bank records and witness testimony from those who encountered Shand near the border do not tie him to the crime, they added.
Prosecutors said Patel had been the coordinator of the operation while Shand had been a driver. Shand was to pick up 11 Indian immigrants on the Minnesota side of the Canadian border, prosecutors said. Only seven survived the foot crossing. Canadian authorities found two parents and their young children later that morning, dead from the cold.
