Human smuggling leader jailed for 10 years after Indian family freezes to death on US-Canada border

Harshkumar Patel likely to be deported to his native India after completing his sentence

Jagdish, Vaishaliben, Vihangi and Dharmik Patel froze to death in a blizzard in January 2022. RCMP / Handout via Reuters

The leader of a human-smuggling plot, in which an Indian family of four froze to death while trying to enter the US from Canada in a blizzard more than three years ago, was sentenced in Minnesota on Wednesday to 10 years in prison.

Federal prosecutors had recommended nearly 20 years for Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, and almost 11 years for Steve Anthony Shand, the driver who was supposed to pick the family up. Shand was jailed for six and a half years on 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,” US District Judge John Tunheim said. “These were deaths that were clearly avoidable.”

Patel's defence lawyer, Thomas Leinenweber, told the court before sentencing that Patel maintains his innocence and says he was no more than a “low man on the totem pole”. Mr Leinenweber asked for his client to be sentenced to time served, 18 months.

But acting US Attorney Lisa Kirkpatrick said Patel exploited the migrants’ hopes for a better life in America out of 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 is expected to be deported to his native India after completing his sentence.

Mr Tunheim ordered Shand to report to prison on 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.

He handed down the sentences at the federal court in the north-western Minnesota city of Fergus Falls, where the two men were tried and convicted on four counts each last November.

Prosecutors said during the trial that Patel, an Indian national who they say went by the alias “Dirty Harry”, and Shand, a US citizen, were part of a sophisticated operation that brought dozens of people from India to Canada on student visas and then smuggled them across the US border.

They said the victims – Jagdish Patel, 39; his wife, Vaishaliben, who was in her mid-30s; their daughter, Vihangi, 11; and son Dharmik, 3 – froze to death. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police found their bodies just north of the border between Manitoba and Minnesota on January 19, 2022.

The family was from Dingucha, a village in the western Indian state of Gujarat, as was Patel. The victims were not related to the defendant. The couple were schoolteachers, local news reports said.

The father died while trying to protect his son'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”, Mr McBride wrote.

A nearby weather station recorded the wind chill that morning at minus 38ºC.