Overview

• Sentencing is scheduled May 28 before U.S. District Judge John Tunheim at the federal courthouse in Fergus Falls, Minnesota.
• Prosecutors urged 19 years and 7 months for Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel and 10 years and 10 months for Steve Anthony Shand under federal guidelines.
• Patel and Shand were convicted last November of running a scheme that brought migrants from India to Canada on student visas before smuggling them into the United States.
• The victims—Jagdish Patel, his wife Vaishaliben and their children Vihangi and Dharmik—froze to death in a January 2022 blizzard with wind chills as low as −36 °F while wearing only inadequate clothing provided by the smugglers.
• Key evidence included Shand’s text prioritizing profit over stranded migrants and his denial to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol that others were left in the snow when he was arrested.