Two men convicted in case of frozen migrant family in Manitoba

FERGUS FALLS — A jury deliberated for less than 90 minutes Friday before convicting two men on human smuggling charges in a case where a family from India froze to death in Manitoba while trying to walk across the Canada-U.S. border.

Steve Shand of Florida and Harshkumar Patel, an Indian national arrested in Chicago, were each found guilty on all four counts they faced related to bringing unauthorized people into the U.S., transporting them and profiting from it.

“This trial exposed the unthinkable cruelty of human smuggling and of those criminal organizations that value profit and greed over humanity,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger told reporters after the verdicts.

“To earn a few thousand dollars, these traffickers put men, women and children in extraordinary peril … a father, mother and two children froze to death in sub-zero temperatures.

“The words ‘immoral depravity’ are the best that I have to describe the conduct that led to this terrible, terrible result.”

Sentencing dates were tentatively set for March. Some of the offences carry a maximum 10 years in prison.

One of Patel’s lawyers, Thomas Leinenweber, said he was disappointed by the verdicts and hinted at a possible appeal

“It was a very tragic case, and (Patel) will be looking at his options,” he said.

The prosecution had argued Shand and Patel were part of an international smuggling ring that brought people from India to Canada on student visas, then sent them on foot across the border to the U.S.

They were accused of carrying out smuggling trips between Manitoba and Minnesota on several occasions in December 2021 and January 2022.

Patel was alleged to have organized the logistics and paid Shand for picking up migrants on the U.S. side in rented vehicles.

Shand was arrested while driving a van on a remote road just south of the border during a blizzard on Jan. 19, 2022.

The temperature was below -20 C and strong winds made it feel even colder. There were two adult migrants in the van and several others on foot nearby.

A U.S. border patrol agent testified that when he opened a backpack from the group and found a diaper, his heart sank because he knew there were others missing.

Hours later, the frozen bodies of Jagdish Patel, 39; his wife Vaishaliben Patel, 37; their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi; and their three-year-old son, Dharmik, were found in a field in Manitoba, metres from the border. They were dressed in jeans and light jackets, and the boy’s body was cradled in his father’s arms.

Patel is a common name in India, and the family was not related to the accused.

“Those men have been convicted in America … they can never tell me why they took my children in the cold. They can never tell me why they did what they did,” Jagdish Patel’s father, Baldev Patel, told The Canadian Press in a phone interview.

“It’s up to God to bring peace and justice.”

Speaking in Hindi from his home in Dingucha, a village in the Gujarat state of western India, he said he’s still numb from losing his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren.

He has said his son held different jobs, including teaching, farming and selling kites, but nothing worked out in India. His son reached out when the family got to Canada and was happy about going to the U.S.

The trial, which began Monday in Fergus Falls, Minn., heard that migrants in India commonly commit to paying up to $100,000 to be smuggled from Canada into the U.S., with many paying off the debt by working low-wage jobs in big cities, such as Chicago.

The jury saw records of dozens of calls and texts between phones allegedly belonging to Shand, Harshkumar Patel and others.

The texts discussed the prices for carrying people, rental vehicles, the dangerous cold and specific locations in a remote section of the border.

Flight and car rental records showed Shand travelling from his home in Florida to the border in Minnesota, then to the Chicago region. Bank records revealed Shand, who owned a small taxi company, and his wife deposited US$36,000 in their accounts during the weeks of the smuggling operations.

One migrant who was on the deadly trek with the family testified he and others were driven to an area in Manitoba and told to walk in a straight line to a waiting van in the U.S. It was cold and dark and, with the blowing snow, he became separated from the group but made it across.

Court heard another migrant picked up by border agents was suffering from severe hypothermia, fading in and out of consciousness. She was flown to Minneapolis for medical care.

Shand’s lawyers argued he was simply a taxi driver, who was offered money by Patel to pick people up in different locations and was unaware he was doing anything wrong until the day of his arrest.

Patel’s lawyers said their client was misidentified. Patel was only arrested earlier this year, and his lawyers said that, unlike Shand, there is no evidence he was near the border.

Patel’s lawyers also said the prosecution was wrong in alleging a contact named Dirty Harry in Shand’s phone, with whom the messages and phone calls were shared, was Patel. The prosecution provided evidence that the number had been used by Patel on a government document.

RCMP have not made any arrests in the case in Canada but have said their investigation is ongoing. Police in India have said three men face related charges there and officials were working to extradite two men from Canada to face charges.

One of those two, Fenil Patel, was mentioned in the Minnesota trial.

Manuel Jimenez, a special agent with Homeland Security, testified that car rental records showed Fenil Patel rented a vehicle in Toronto on Jan. 17, 2022 and drove it to Winnipeg, dropping it off in the Manitoba capital the next day — the same day the family who died was taken to the border.

Another witness, Rajinder Singh, told the trial Fenil Patel was a smuggling organizer on the Canadian side of the border. Singh also said the family had called Patel while they were trying to cross to say it was too cold to continue.

Singh said Patel told the family to turn around and he would have someone pick them up where they started, but it was a lie because there was no one there.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 22, 2024.

— With files from Hina Alam in Fredericton

Steve Lambert, The Canadian Press