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A pair of human traffickers received sentences of 10 and 6.5 years on Wednesday following the deaths of an Indian family, including two children, who froze during a blizzard in 2022 while attempting to illegally cross the northern border into the U.S. from Canada.
Announcing the sentences, U.S. District Judge John Tunheim said, "The crime in many respects is extraordinary because it did result in the unimaginable death of four individuals, including two children," according to AP.
The outlet reported that Tunheim said, "These were deaths that were clearly avoidable."
This follows a jury in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, finding the two, Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, 29, and Steve Shand, 50, guilty on four counts, including conspiracy to bring migrants into the country illegally.
Patel, who is an Indian national, received a sentence of nearly 11 years. Shand, a U.S. citizen from Florida, received 6.5 years with two years’ supervised release. AP reported that neither of the men showed any emotions as they received their sentences.
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This follows the 2022 deaths of Jagdish Patel, his wife, Vaishaliben, who were both in their 30s, and their children: daughter Vihangi, 11, and son Dharmik, 3, all of whom froze to death in January 2022 while attempting to illegally cross into Minnesota via an operation coordinated by Patel and Shand. The family members were not related to Patel.
The family was among 11 migrants in the same group who made the treacherous crossing to Minnesota that January. After only seven made it across, the family was found dead the next day by Canadian authorities. The seven others, determined to be Indian nationals, were stopped by U.S. Border Patrol in North Dakota near Minnesota.
Prosecutors said Patel, who was also known as "Dirty Harry," organized the scheme, and Shand was the driver. Both men were involved in an international smuggling ring that helped Indians illegally cross the border.
A Wednesday statement by the U.S. Department of Justice said that the recorded wind chill temperature on the morning of the incident was -36 degrees.
AP reported U.S. prosecutor Michael McBride wrote the father died while trying to shield Dharmik’s face from a "blistering wind" with a frozen glove. Vihangi was wearing "ill-fitting boots and gloves," and the mother "died slumped against a chain-link fence she must have thought salvation lay behind."
The DOJ said that after being discovered with two aliens in his car, Shand claimed there were no others out in the snow. However, five more aliens emerged from the fields, including one suffering hypothermia who was airlifted to Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Another human smuggler, who was part of the ring, testified during the trial that he had made more than $400,000 smuggling more than 500 Indian migrants across the U.S. border and that the migrants usually work low-wage jobs in the U.S. to pay off their debts to the smugglers, which can be as much as $100,000.
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Commenting on the sentencing, Jamie Holt, special agent in charge of U.S. ICE Homeland Security Investigations St. Paul, said: "Today’s sentencing marks a crucial moment of accountability in a case that revealed the harrowing realities of human smuggling."
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Acting U.S. Attorney Lisa Kirkpatrick for the District of Minnesota added, "As we’ve seen time and time again, human traffickers care nothing for humanity."
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"Every time I think about this case, I think about this family — including two beautiful little children — who the defendants left to freeze to death in a blizzard," said Kirkpatrick. "I am proud of the work of our law enforcement partners in holding these defendants accountable for their unspeakable crimes."
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