Two human smugglers convicted after a family of four froze to death trying to cross the border from Manitoba into the U.S. have been sentenced, with the ringleader of the plot set to spend just over 10 years in prison.
U.S. federal prosecutors had recommended nearly 20 years for Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, and nearly 11 years for the driver who was supposed to pick them up, Steve Anthony Shand.
Shand has been sentenced to six and a half years, to be followed by supervised release.
“The crime in many respects is extraordinary because it did result in the unimaginable death of four individuals, including two children,” U.S. District Judge John Tunheim said. “These were deaths that were clearly avoidable.”
Defence attorney Thomas Leinenweber told the court before sentencing that Patel maintains his innocence and argued he was no more than a “low man on the totem pole.” He asked for time served, 18 months.
But acting U.S. Attorney Lisa Kirkpatrick told the court that Patel exploited the migrants’ hopes for a better life in America, out of his own greed.
“Mr. Patel’s lawyer said it well when he said ‘tragic’ almost rings hollow when we talk about what happened here,” Kirkpatrick told reporters after the sentences were handed down.
“We can’t bring the family back,” she said. “But with the lengthy sentences imposed today, we can send a strong message, a message that human life does not have a price tag.”
Patel, in an orange uniform and handcuffed, declined to address the court. He showed no visible emotion as the sentence was issued. Patel is likely to be deported to his native India after completing his sentence. He co-operated as marshals handcuffed him and led him from the courtroom.
The judge handed down the sentence at the federal courthouse in the northwestern Minnesota city of Fergus Falls, where the two men were tried and convicted on four counts apiece last November.
Tunheim declined last month to set aside the guilty verdicts, writing, “This was not a close case.”
The smuggling operation
Prosecutors said during the trial that Patel, an Indian national who they say went by the alias “Dirty Harry,” and Shand, a U.S. citizen from Florida, were part of a sophisticated illegal operation that brought dozens of people from India to Canada on student visas and then smuggled them across the U.S. border.
They said the victims — Jagdish Patel, 39; his wife, Vaishaliben, 37; their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi; and three-year-old son, Dharmik — froze to death. The RCMP found their bodies just north of the border between Manitoba and Minnesota on Jan. 19, 2022.
The family was from Dingucha, a village in the western Indian state of Gujarat, as was Harshkumar Patel. Patel is a common Indian surname, and the victims were not related to the defendant.
The couple were schoolteachers, local news reports said. So many villagers have gone overseas in hopes of better lives — legally and otherwise — that many homes there stand vacant.
The father died while trying to shield Dharmik’s face from a “blistering wind” with a frozen glove, prosecutor Michael McBride wrote. Vihangi was wearing “ill-fitting boots and gloves.” Their mother “died slumped against a chain-link fence she must have thought salvation lay behind,” McBride wrote.
The temperature that day was –23 C, but the wind chill made it feel like –35 to –38.
“I’m a lifelong Minnesotan. I would not go out in this weather,” Kirkpatrick told reporters after Wednesday’s sentencing. “But the defendants sent into that weather 11 migrants, Indian nationals who were not dressed appropriately, who were ill-prepared for the weather they faced that night.”
Seven other members of their group survived the foot crossing, but only two made it to Shand’s van, which was stuck in the snow on the Minnesota side. One woman who survived had to be flown to a hospital with severe frostbite and hypothermia. Another survivor testified he had never seen snow before arriving in Canada.
‘Never shown an ounce of remorse’: prosecutor
“Mr. Patel has never shown an ounce of remorse. Even today, he continues to deny he is the ‘Dirty Harry’ that worked with Mr. Shand on this smuggling venture — despite substantial evidence to the contrary and counsel for his co-defendant identifying him as such at trial,” McBride wrote.
The smugglers put money before the lost migrants’ safety, McBride argued.
“Even as this family wandered through the blizzard at 1 a.m., searching for Mr. Shand’s van, Mr. Shand was focused on one thing, which he texted Mr. Patel: ‘we not losing any money,”‘ McBride wrote.
“Worse, when Customs and Border Patrol arrested Mr. Shand sitting in a mostly unoccupied 15-passenger van, he denied others were out in the snow — leaving them to freeze without aid.”
Patel’s attorneys did request a government-paid attorney for his planned appeal. Patel has been jailed since his arrest at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago in February 2024 and claimed in the filing to have no income and no assets.
“He’s disappointed but … he is in a country where he is not a citizen, and he will still be afforded all the rights of an American citizen to appeal this,” Leinenweber said. “For that, he should be grateful.”
Shand’s attorney requested just 27 months for his client. The attorney, federal defender Aaron Morrison, acknowledged that Shand has “a level of culpability” but argued that his role was limited — that he was just a taxi driver who needed money to support his wife and six children.
“Mr. Shand was on the outside of the conspiracy, he did not plan the smuggling operation, he did not have decision making authority, and he did not reap the huge financial benefits as the real conspirators did,” Morrison wrote.
Steve Shand and Harshkumar Patel, two men convicted of human smuggling in a case where a family of four from India froze to death trying to cross the border from Manitoba into the U.S. in 2022, are set to be sentenced in a Fergus Falls, Minn., courthouse on Wednesday.
Kirkpatrick said the investigation into the smuggling ring is still ongoing.
