2 men found guilty in deadly Minnesota border crossing case

FERGUS FALLS, Minn. – A federal jury on Friday convicted two men on all counts for their roles in a human smuggling network that arranged the passage of a family of four migrants who ultimately froze to death as they became lost in a blizzard trying to illegally cross from Canada into America.

Harshkumar Patel and Steve Shand were found guilty of conspiracy to bring noncitizens to the United States, causing serious bodily injury and placing lives in jeopardy; conspiracy to transport aliens causing serious bodily injury and placing lives in jeopardy; attempted transportation of aliens in the U.S. for purposes of commercial advantage and private financial gain; and aiding and abetting the attempted transportation of aliens in America for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain.

The jury took a little more than an hour to deliver the verdict after hearing more than three days of evidence.

Prosecutors argued that the defendants put profit over human lives the night of Jan. 19, 2022, when Patel paid Shand to drive to northern Minnesota to pick up a group of 11 migrants from India who would walk over from the Manitoba side. But as temperatures dropped below minus 33 degrees and a blizzard raged, a family died in the snow: Jagdish Patel, 39; his wife Vaishaliben, 37; Vihangi, 11; and Dharmik, 3. That morning, authorities stopped Shand in a van near the border and discovered two migrants inside; soon they came across five more stumbling in from the fields, one with severe frostbite.

The government asserted that Patel (no relation to the victims) coordinated a series of trips from Florida starting in December 2021, paying fellow Florida resident Shand to pick up migrants who had illegally crossed the border and drop them off in Chicago.

Patel’s attorney said authorities had the wrong man and he wasn’t the same person who was communicating with Shand over the phone about the trips. Shand’s defense counsel described his client as a cabdriver who was an unwitting participant in the scheme and “used” by Patel and others. One of the prosecution’s key witnesses, convicted West Coast smuggler Rajinder Pal Singh, blamed a Canadian player in the smuggling network for the Patel family’s deaths. He said Fenil Patel, who was charged by Indian police and lives in Toronto, arranged for Indian migrants to get Canadian visas so they could unlawfully cross into the United States and that he coordinated their passage from north of the border.

(Patel is a common name in India, and Fenil Patel is not related to either Harshkumar Patel or the Patel family who died.)

Judge John R. Tunheim denied a motion for a mistrial by Shand’s attorney, Aaron Morrison, after a late disclosure that one of the prosecution’s witnesses, Border Patrol agent Daniel Huguley, had been suspended for 14 days in 2019 for conduct that his agency found called into question his professionalism. Prosecutors said they received the file only late Thursday afternoon, two days after Huguley appeared on the witness stand. While on detail in New Mexico, the CBP found, he tried to gain access to a woman’s room without her consent after misrepresenting himself to the front desk of a hotel.

In special instructions to the jury, Tunheim said that Huguley did not disclose this despite being asked about his disciplinary record by Homeland Security Investigations special agent Manuel Jimenez, and that jurors could bring the information to bear on the credibility of his testimony.

Shand’s defense counsel declined to comment after the trial. Patel’s attorney said he was a little disappointed in the verdict but that the judge and prosecution “did a very nice job.”

“It’s a very tragic case and [Patel] will be looking at his options now,” said attorney Tom Leinenweber.

Asked about Fenil Patel, who has not been criminally charged in North America, U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger said, “The investigation of this case and all involved continues and that’s all I can say about that.”

Luger voiced condolences to the Jagdish Patel family and their loved ones in remarks to reporters after the verdict. The trial, he said, “exposed the unthinkable cruelty of human smuggling and of those criminal organizations that value profit and greed over humanity.”