Two men face prison for human smuggling after death of Indian family of four on U.S.-Canada border

Two men face sentencing in Minnesota for human smuggling in a tragic case of a family freezing to death.

More than three years after a family of four from India froze to death while trying to cross into the U.S. along a remote stretch of the Canadian border in a blizzard, two men face sentencing in Minnesota on Wednesday (May 28, 2025) on human smuggling charges for their roles what prosecutors call an international conspiracy.

Federal prosecutors have recommended nearly 20 years in prison for the alleged ringleader, Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, and nearly 11 years for the driver, who was supposed to pick the family up, Steve Anthony Shand.

The prison terms are up to U.S. District Judge John Tunheim, who declined last month to set aside the guilty verdicts, writing, “This was not a close case.”

Judge Tunheim will hand down the sentences at the federal courthouse in the northwestern Minnesota city of Fergus Falls, where the two men were tried and convicted on four counts apiece last November.

Prosecutors said during the trial that Patel, an Indian national who they say went by the alias “Dirty Harry,” and Shand, a U.S. citizen from Florida, 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 Gujarat, as was Harshkumar Patel. The victims were not related to the defendant. The couple were schoolteachers, local news reports said. So many villagers have gone overseas in hopes of better lives — legally and otherwise — that many homes there stand vacant.