A Florida man faces a federal charge of human smuggling after a family of four people, including a baby, was found frozen to death in a blizzard at the Minnesota-Canada border.
Steve Shand, 47, was charged Thursday in U.S. District Court. According to the criminal complaint, Shand was arrested Wednesday as he drove through a howling storm on a dirt road in remote northwestern Minnesota in a 15-passenger van that he rented at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
Authorities said Shand was planning to pick up 11 Indian nationals attempting to enter the United States illegally after walking across the border in subzero temperatures from Canada into Kittson County.
Two of the unauthorized immigrants were in the van with Shand when he was arrested about 7 miles northeast of St. Vincent, Minn., according to the complaint. Five others were taken into custody about a quarter-mile south of the border as they walked toward their meeting place.
Four others — a man, a woman, a teenage boy and the baby — died after becoming separated from the group during a night when the temperature hit 10 degrees below and windchills were likely at least 30 below. The four dead were all from the same family, said one of the unauthorized immigrants who was arrested.
According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the family didn't quite make it to the United States. Their bodies were found in the snow on the Canadian side, about 6 miles east of Emerson, Manitoba, just 10 yards from the border.
One of the people arrested, a woman, stopped breathing several times while in custody and may need to have part of a frostbitten hand amputated, police said.
Federal authorities said they suspect Shand is part of a larger smuggling operation in what border patrol officials have called a high-volume trafficking area. One of the men detained told authorities he paid "a significant amount of money" to enter Canada illegally on a fraudulent student visa and planned to make his way to the home of an uncle in Chicago.
