The United States has indicted two, including an Indian citizen, on human trafficking-related charges following the death of an Indian migrant family while attempting to cross the Canada-US border during the 2022 snowstorm. A Minnesota jury found that Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, an Indian national known by the nickname “Dirty Harry,” and Florida resident Steve Shand, prosecutors said, were part of a sophisticated illegal operation that brought large numbers of Indians to the US.
Patel, 29, and Shand, 50, were convicted on four counts related to human trafficking, including conspiracy to bring migrants into the country illegally. The most serious cases carry a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison, the Associated Press reported, citing the US Attorney’s Office.
However, federal sentencing guidelines in the US rely on complex formulas. According to Minnesota’s U.S. Attorney Andy Lugar, a variety of factors will be considered to determine what sentence prosecutors will recommend for the defendants.
Case
The victims – 39-year-old Jagdish Patel, his wife Vaishaliben, also in her 30s, their 11-year-old daughter Vihangi and three-year-old son Dharmic – were found frozen to death near the town of Emerson. On January 19, 2022, by Canadian authorities in the province of Manitoba, Patel and Shand were trying to cross the border into Minnesota as part of a plan organized by Patel.
The family was originally from Dingucha village in Gandhinagar district of Gujarat. Patel and his wife were reportedly schoolteachers and their family was quite affluent by local standards. Patel was part of an 11-member group of undocumented Indian immigrants who paid smugglers for their illegal entry into the US.
decision
The verdict in the case came Friday at the end of a five-day federal trial in Fergus Falls, Minnesota.
Condemning the operation, US Attorney Lugar said, “This trial exposed human trafficking and the unimaginable cruelty of criminal organizations that value profit and greed over humanity.”
“To earn a few thousand dollars, these traffickers subject men, women and children to extraordinary danger, leading to the horrific and tragic deaths of entire families. “Because of this unimaginable greed, a father, a mother and two children froze to death in sub-zero temperatures on the Minnesota-Canadian border.”
During the trial, defense lawyers for both the accused were pitted against each other. Shand’s team said that their client had been unknowingly drawn into Patel’s trafficking scheme, while Patel’s lawyers argued that he had been mistakenly identified.
According to The Canadian Press, Patel’s team said their client’s alleged alias in Shand’s phone, “Dirty Harry”, is a different person.
However, prosecutors argued that Patel was the coordinator of the smuggling operation while Shand was a driver. He said that Shand was supposed to pick up 11 Indian immigrants on the Minnesota side of the border, however, only seven survived while crossing on foot.
That morning, Canadian officials found the Patel family dead from freezing.
During the trial, 29-year-old survivor Yash Patel, who managed to cross and reach the van driven by Shand on that fateful day, also testified. He told the court the group had become separated after setting foot in a blizzard. The van was later captured by Border Patrol police.
The lawsuit also included an inside account of an alleged participant in the smuggling ring. Rajinder Singh, 51, who survived the dangerous journey across the northern border, testified that he made more than US$400,000 by smuggling more than 500 people through the same network that included Patel and Shand.
According to the AP report, Singh said most of the people he trafficked came from the state of Gujarat. He said migrants often paid smugglers as much as US$100,000 to take them from India to the US, where they worked at low-wage jobs in cities across the country to pay off their debts. According to Singh, smugglers run their finances through “hawala”, an informal money transfer system that depends on trust.
