Head of human smuggling plot gets 10 years after family of 4 froze to death on U.S.-Canada border

NBC News

7 days ago

FERGUS FALLS, Minn. — More than three years after a family of four from India froze to death while trying to enter the U.S. along a remote stretch of the Canadian border in a blizzard, the convicted ringleader of an international human smuggling plot was sentenced in Minnesota on Wednesday to 10 years in prison.
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, who got 6 1/2 years Wednesday with two years' 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."
Patel's defense 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 said Patel exploited the migrants' hopes for a better life in America, out of his own greed.
"We should make no mistake, it was the defendant's greed that set in motion the facts that bring us here today," she said.
Patel, in an orange uniform and handcuffed, declined to address the court. He showed no visible emotion as the sentence was issued. He is likely to be deported to his native India after completing his sentence. He cooperated as marshals handcuffed him and led him from the courtroom.
Shand, who had been free pending sentencing, showed no visible reaction to his own sentence. The judge ordered him to report to prison July 1 and agreed to recommend that he serve his sentence at the Federal Prison Camp in Pensacola, Florida, where he can be near his family.
The judge handed down the sentences 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, 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, who was in her mid-30s; their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi; and 3-year-old son, Dharmik, froze to death. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police 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.
Harsh blizzard conditions
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.
A nearby weather station recorded the wind chill that morning at -36 Fahrenheit.
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.
What prosecutors say
"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 1:00 AM, 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."
What defense attorneys say
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 a filing to have no income and no assets.
Shand's 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.