Indian family freezes to death while crossing Canada-US border, dangerous journey becoming more common

According to federal prosecutors, Harshkumar Patel, an experienced smuggler nicknamed “Dirty Harry,” coordinated the activities in Canada. On the U.S. side was Steve Shand, a driver Patel had recently recruited at a casino near their Florida homes, prosecutors said.

Two men, whose trial is due to begin Monday, are accused of being part of a sophisticated people-smuggling operation that fed a rapidly growing population of Indians living illegally in the United States. Both pleaded not guilty.

During the five weeks they worked together, documents filed by prosecutors say they often talked about the bitter cold as they ferried five groups of Indians across that quiet stretch of the border.

“16 degrees is cold as hell,” Shand wrote on a previous trip. “Will they be alive when they get here?”

On the last trip, on January 19, 2022, Shand was to pick up 11 more Indian migrants, including the Patels. Only seven survived.

Later in the morning, Canadian authorities found the Patels dead from the cold.

In Jagdish Patel’s frozen hands was the body of his 3-year-old son Dharmik, wrapped in a blanket.

The narrow streets of Dinguchi, a quiet village in the western Indian state of Gujarat, are dotted with ads for overseas relocation.

“Fulfill your dream of traveling abroad,” reads one poster listing three tempting destinations: “Canada. Australia. USA”.

This is where the family’s deadly journey began.

Jagdish Patel, 39, grew up in Dinguchi. He and his wife, Vaishaliben, who was in her 30s, lived with his parents, raising their 11-year-old daughter Vihangi and Dharmika. (Patel is a common Indian surname, and they are not related to Harshkumar Patel.) The couple were school teachers, local news reports said.

The family was quite well-off by local standards, living in a well-kept two-story house with a front yard and a wide veranda.

“It was not a luxurious life,” said Vaibhav Jha, a local reporter who spent days in the village. “But there was no need or desperation.”

Experts say illegal immigration from India is driven by everything from political repression to a dysfunctional U.S. immigration system that can take years, if not decades, to become legal.

But much is rooted in economics and how even a low-paying job in the West can spark hope for a better life.

These hopes changed Dinguch.

Today, so many villagers have moved abroad—legally or otherwise—that blocks of houses are empty, and the social media feeds of those who remain are filled with old neighbors showing off houses and cars.

This causes even more people to leave.

“There was so much pressure in the village where people grew up wanting a good life,” Jah said.

Smuggling networks were happy to help, charging fees that could reach $90,000 per person. According to Jah, many families in Dinguch have been able to afford this by selling their agricultural land.

Satvir Chaudhary is a Minneapolis-based immigration attorney who has helped migrants who were exploited by motel owners, many of whom were citizens of Gujarat.

Smugglers linked to the Gujarati business community have created an underground network, recruiting workers willing to do the work for low or even no pay, he said.

“Their own community took advantage of them,” Chaudhary said.

The pipeline of illegal immigration from India has existed for a long time, but has increased dramatically along the US-Canada border. The U.S. Border Patrol arrested more than 14,000 Indians on the Canadian border in the year ended Sept. 30, accounting for 60 percent of all arrests along the border and more than 10 times the number two years ago.

By 2022, the Pew Research Center estimates that there will be more than 725,000 Indians living illegally in the US, second only to Mexicans and Salvadorans.

In India, investigating officer Dilip Thakor said media attention led to the arrest of three men in the Patel case, but hundreds of such cases never even make it to court.

With so many Indians trying to get to the US, smuggling networks see no need to warn customers.

They are “telling people that it is very easy to get into the US. They never tell them about the dangers involved,” Thakor said.

U.S. prosecutors say Patel and Shand were involved in a large-scale operation in which people sought business in India, obtained Canadian student visas, arranged transportation and smuggled migrants into the U.S., mostly through Washington state or Minnesota.

Patel, 29, and Shand, 50, will be charged Monday in federal court in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, with four counts of human smuggling.

Patel’s attorney, Thomas Leinenweber, told the Associated Press that his client came to America to escape poverty and build a better life, and “now he is unfairly accused of participating in this heinous crime.”

Shand’s attorney did not return calls seeking comment. Prosecutors say Shand told investigators that Patel paid him about $25,000 for five trips.

Its last passengers, however, did not make it.

By 3 a.m. on January 19, 2022, 11 Indian migrants had been wandering for hours in heavy snow and bitter cold in an attempt to find Shand. Many were wearing jeans and rubber boots. No one wore serious winter clothes.

However, Shand was stuck. Prosecutors say he was on his way to a boarding point in a 15-passenger rental van when he drove into a ditch about half a mile (0.8 kilometers) from the border.

Later, two migrants came across a minibus. After a while, a worker of the pipeline company, passing by, pulled the car out of the ditch.

Shortly thereafter, Shand was stopped by a U.S. Border Patrol agent who was following the migrants after boot prints were found near the border.

Shand repeatedly insisted that there was no one else on the street, even as five more desperate Indians approached the car from the fields, including one who came and passed out.

They walked for more than 11 hours.

There were no children among the migrants, but one man had a backpack stuffed with toys, children’s clothes and diapers. He said a family of four Indians asked him to hold him because they had to carry their young son.

They broke up sometime during the night.

A few hours later, the Patels’ bodies were found in Canada, in a field near where the migrants had crossed into the US.

Jagdish was holding Dharmik while daughter Vihangi was by his side. Vaishaliben was a short walk away.

Hemant Shah, an Indian-origin businessman who lives in Winnipeg, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) north of where the migrants were found, helped organize a virtual prayer service for the Patels.

He is used to harsh winters and cannot imagine the suffering they have endured.

“How could these people even think of going and crossing the border?” said Shah.

According to him, greed took four lives: “There was no humanity.”