FERGUS FALLS, Minn. — A jury has been selected in a high-profile federal trial this week accusing two men of running a human smuggling operation at the U.S.-Canada border, where Manitoba, North Dakota and Minnesota meet.
The trial, taking place in Fergus Falls, Minn., is expected to last the rest of this week, according to CBC News. The case has gained international attention because the smuggling operation involved the death of the Patel family, who froze in 2022 while making the dangerous journey across vast, open farmland in sub-zero temperatures.
Prosecutors allege that Steve Shand and Harshkumar "Harry" Patel — who is not related to the family that died — worked to facilitate border crossings for a large group of Indian nationals that winter. According to court documents, Shand told investigators that "Patel recruited him to transport illegal aliens from the U.S./Canadian border in Minnesota to the Chicago area for money."
The deaths of Jagdish Patel, Vaishali Patel and their two young children made headlines across the world, including in their home region of western India, by highlighting the desperation of migrant families and the dangers of human smugglers that take advantage of them.
Thomas Leinenweber, an attorney for Harshkumar Patel, told KARE 11 in a statement that "we look forward to the trial and the chance to show that Mr. Patel took no part in this tragic event." Meanwhile, CBC News reported that Shand's attorney, Aaron Morrison, argued unsuccessfully during jury selection on Monday to shield jurors from seeing photos from the family's deaths.
The alleged smuggling operation at the Canada-U.S. border is also part of a larger immigration trend, involving migrant families attempting to cross into America through the North rather than the South. As KARE 11 reported last year, apprehensions have skyrocketed in the Grand Forks, N.D. region in recent years.
According to the latest U.S. Customs and Border Protections data, the number of apprehensions in the Grand Forks region more than tripled from 81 in 2022 to 300 in 2023. So far in 2024, the agency reports 259 apprehensions, which appears to be on pace for last year's total with winter months now looming.
Ana Pottratz Acosta, an expert in immigration law at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Saint Paul, said these trends may continue with enforcement continuing to tighten in the south. She also said that human smugglers are clearly preying on vulnerable families that have few other options than to leave their home country.
"Often times these are kind of complex operations," Acosta said, "where they are often working in cahoots with other criminal organizations on opposite sides of the border to try to take advantage of very desperate circumstances."