Attorney for one man charged in migrant family’s death on Canada-Minnesota border says he was duped

FERGUS FALLS, Minn. – Steve Shand was just a cab driver who was tricked into picking up migrants without knowing they were part of a smuggling operation, his defense attorney said on the first day of his trial in federal court Monday.

“Mr. Shand did not agree to participate in any crime,” assistant federal defender Lisa Lopez said in her opening arguments.

She said that co-defendant Harshkumar Patel recruited Shand many times as a driver for groups of people in Florida, where they lived and met, before asking him to start transporting passengers in the Midwest. The first such trip in December 2021 – which prosecutors say was the start of a conspiracy to illegally bring a series of Indian nationals over the northern border – took place after Patel directed Shand to pick up some people at Love’s Travel Stop in Drayton, N.D., and bring them to Chicago, according to Lopez.

The town wasn’t on the Canadian border; in fact, Lopez noted, it was 30 miles away. She said Shand found nothing particularly suspicious about the job, “and that’s how Mr. Patel sort of eased Mr. Shand into these out-of-state trips. That’s how he had him become an unknowing participant in his scheme because that first trip raised no red flags for Mr. Shand.”

But prosecutors said the two men on trial were so driven to make money off desperate migrants over the course of four subsequent trips that they continued with plans to have a group of 11 people illegally cross the Canadian border into Minnesota during a subzero blizzard on the night of Jan. 19, 2022, leading to a family of four freezing to death.

“This case is about these two men putting profits over people’s lives,” said federal prosecutor Ryan Lipes, turning and pointing at the defendants.

The deaths of Jagdish Patel, 39, his wife Vaishaliben, 37, their daughter Vihangi, 11, and son Dharmik, 3, drew international attention and spawned investigations in the U.S., Canada and the family’s native Indian state of Gujarat. (The victims are not related to Harshkumar Patel, who is also from Gujarat.)

Shand and Patel were indicted in Minnesota on charges of conspiracy to transport and bring unauthorized immigrants to the U.S.; causing serious bodily injury and placing lives in jeopardy; and attempted transportation and aiding and abetting transportation of aliens for commercial advantage and private financial gain.

U.S. District Court Judge John R. Tunheim decided to allow the government to present photos of the deceased victims as evidence during the trial, though defense attorneys argued that such material wasn’t necessary.

Selecting the jury of 12 people and two alternates took most of the day, with a series of prospective jurors dismissed after they admitted they couldn’t be impartial due to the case involving deaths of children or unlawful immigration.

Just two of the 11 migrants he was supposed to transport had found their way to Shand’s van near the Minnnesota-Manitoba border that night in 2022 when a Border Patrol agent stopped him, searched the vehicle and arrested Shand. At that point, according to Lopez, Shand realized he had been used — “but by then,” she said, “it was too late.”

Authorities found five more migrants walking in the fields and then came upon the Patels’ frozen bodies.

Lipes said that Harshkumar Patel, who was not anywhere near the scene, threw out his phone that day and got a new number. Authorities began following his digital trail after discovering his messages in Shand’s phones, but were only able to find and arrest him two years later in Chicago.

Thomas Leinenweber, Patel’s attorney, insisted his client was wrongly accused and that there would be no witness nor video or voice recordings that could show that Patel had conspired with anyone in the case.

“It didn’t happen,” said Leinenweber.

On Tuesday, the government is scheduled to start calling witnesses, including Yash Patel, one of the migrants who made it to Shand’s van the night that the Patel family died. Also testifying will be Rajinder Pal Singh, who pleaded guilty in Seattle federal court last year to his role as a key member in a smuggling ring that brought hundreds of Indian nationals from Canada into Washington state and then to locations in the Midwest and beyond.