The Indian ringleader of an international human smuggling plot also known as “Dirty Harry” has been sentenced to ten years in prison for his role in ferrying Indians into the U.S. via Canada.
Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel was sentenced by a judge in Minnesota on Wednesday, more than three years after a family of four from Gujarat froze to death while trying to enter the U.S. along a remote stretch of the Canadian border in a blizzard.
Federal prosecutors had recommended nearly 20 years for 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.
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“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.”
Prosecutors said during the trial that Patel, 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 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 (-38 Celsius).
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.
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A top regional U.S. Customs and Border Protection official told reporters Wednesday that human smuggling along the border in the area has been holding “fairly steady,” with no sharp increases or decreases.
“We hope that this is a strong message, and especially during the inclement months,” said Michael Hanson, the acting chief patrol agent for the Grand Forks, North Dakota, sector, which covers North Dakota and Minnesota. “You know, there very well could have been 11 deaths associated with this event.”