Jury selection starts in Minnesota trial of 2 men charged after family died crossing Manitoba-U.S. border

A trial in Minnesota for two men accused of helping smuggle people across the U.S.-Canada border, including four members of an Indian family who froze to death in Manitoba as they tried to make it across in 2022, starts this morning with jury selection.

Potential jurors are being called from across parts of Minnesota for the trial, which comes almost three years after the bodies of Jagdish Patel, 39, his wife, Vaishali, 37, their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi, and their three-year-old son, Dharmik, were found in a snow-drifted field just 12 metres from the U.S. border.

Their bodies were found on Jan. 19, 2022, after they tried to cross the border during a blizzard. The temperature that day was –23 C, but the wind chill was between –35 and –38.

Two Florida men — Harshkumar Patel, who is not related to the victims, and Steve Shand — were indicted earlier this year by U.S. federal prosecutors in relation to the case.

Patel was arrested in Chicago in February 2024. Shand was arrested on Jan. 19, 2022, by U.S. border patrol agents on a highway in Minnesota, just south of the Canadian border near Emerson, Man.

The men are charged with several counts related to human smuggling. They have pleaded not guilty. 

CBC News is in Minnesota this week for the men's trial, which is scheduled to take approximately five days in Fergus Falls, about 80 kilometres southeast of Fargo, N.D. — the closest federal courthouse to where the incident happened.

The family who died near the border was part of a group of 11 Indian nationals all trying to make the same journey across in January 2022.

Harshkumar Patel, who prosecutors say had a number of aliases, including "Dirty Harry," is alleged to have hired and paid Shand to meet and transport the migrants once they crossed the border into the U.S.

The prosecution's trial brief filed last month outlined their case against Patel and Shand, including allegations they smuggled dozens of individuals across the Canada-U.S. border as part of a large, systematic human smuggling operation that brought Indian nationals to Canada on student visas and then smuggled them into the U.S.

Shand and Patel — in co-ordination with co-conspirators in Canada — managed the Manitoba to Minnesota crossings, prosecutors allege. Patel co-ordinated with smugglers in Canada to determine locations, dates and numbers of migrants, the document says.

To date, no one in Canada is facing charges. An RCMP spokesperson said the investigation is ongoing and no arrests have been made.

U.S. prosecutors say they intend to call several witnesses during the trial, including law enforcement officers who responded to the scene and investigated the scheme.

Two Canadian forensic pathologists are also expected to testify about the Patel family's autopsies.