Two men found guilty of human smuggling after Indian family froze to death crossing US-Canada border

Sherburne County Sheriff’s Office shows Harshkumar Patel in Elk River, Minn., and undated photo released by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement shows Steve Shand. - (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Two men have been convicted on charges relating to human smuggling in a trial over the deaths of an Indian family that froze to death crossing the U.S.-Canada border.

Indian national Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, 29, and Steve Shand, 50, an American from Florida, were part of a sophisticated smuggling operation that brought people from Canada into the U.S. illegally, prosecutors said.

Patel coordinated the deadly crossing in January 2022, and Shand was a driver who was supposed to pick up 11 Indian migrants on the Minnesota side of the border.

Only seven made it across. Canadian authorities found Jagdish Patel and his wife, Vaishaliben, their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi, and three-year-old son, Dharmik, frozen to death.

Jagdish, the father, was discovered holding his infant son in a blanket.

39-year-old Jagdish Patel; his wife, Vaishaliben, who was in her mid-30s; their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi; and 3-year-old son, Dharmik, froze to death while trying to cross from Canada into the US. (RCMP Manitoba)

The two men were convicted by a jury in a federal trial in Fergus Falls, Minnesota.

The trial has shone a light on a dramatic increase in the number of people crossing illegally into the U.S. from Canada in recent years, most of them Indian nationals.

The U.S. Border Patrol arrested more than 14,000 Indians on the Canadian border in the year ending September 30, which accounted for some 60 percent of all arrests. By 2022, the Pew Research Center estimates there were more than 725,000 Indians living illegally in the U.S., behind only Mexicans and El Salvadorans.

Indian officials say migrants find their way to the U.S. by taking advantage of student visas to Canada and crossing from there.

“This trial exposed the unthinkable cruelty of human smuggling and of those criminal organizations that value profit and greed over humanity,” Minnesota U.S. Attorney Andy Luger told the Associated Press.

“To earn a few thousand dollars, these traffickers put men, women and children in extraordinary peril leading to the horrific and tragic deaths of an entire family. Because of this unimaginable greed, a father, a mother and two children froze to death in sub-zero temperatures on the Minnesota-Canadian border,” Luger added.

The jury in the trial, which began on Monday, heard testimony from an alleged participant in the smuggling ring and a survivor of the deadly journey. Border patrol agents and forensic experts also testified.