Family of 4 being smuggled into US found frozen to death, feds say. ‘Unthinkable cruelty’
Two men are accused of smuggling foreign nationals into the United States, leading four people to freeze to death.
Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, 29, and Steve Anthony Shand, 50, were convicted of human smuggling, according to a Nov. 22 news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota.
“While we are disappointed in verdict, we respect the jury’s decision. Mr. Patel maintains that he had nothing to do with this tragic situation and is planning on appealing,” Patel’s attorney told McClatchy News in an email.
McClatchy News reached out to Shand’s attorney but did not immediately hear back.
According to officials, “Patel and Shand were part of a large-scale human-smuggling operation that brought Indian nationals to Canada on student visas and then smuggled them into the United States.”
Patel and Shand were paid to coordinate a smuggling plan and transport people from Manitoba, Canada, into the United States, officials said.
On Jan. 19, 2022, the U.S. Border Patrol stopped a fifteen-passenger van driven by Shand less than one mile south of the U.S.-Canadian border, officials said.
Shortly after, law enforcement found five Indian nationals roughly a quarter-mile south of the Canadian border walking toward where Shand had been arrested. The group told authorities they walked for about seven hours, across the border and were supposed to be picked up by someone, officials said.
One of the people in the group had a backpack with children’s clothes, diapers and toys inside, according to the release. He told authorities the backpack wasn’t his and he was carrying it for a “family of four Indian nationals that had walked with his group but had become separated during the night,” officials said.
A short time later, the family of four, two adults and two small children, was found frozen to death inside the Canadian side of the international border, according to prosecutors.
Temperatures that night dropped to -36 degrees. Officials said Patel and Shand “disregarded the risks posed by the cold weather at the northern border.”
“This trial exposed the unthinkable cruelty of human smuggling and the lengths that traffickers will go to maximize profit – putting men, women and little children in extraordinary peril, ultimately leading to the tragic deaths of an entire family,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger said.
This story was originally published November 25, 2024 at 9:37 AM with the headline "Family of 4 being smuggled into US found frozen to death, feds say. ‘Unthinkable cruelty’."
