(Duluth) A Florida man pleaded not guilty on Friday to human trafficking charges in the case linked to the discovery last year of a family of four Indian migrants who were found frozen to death a few steps from the Canada-US border in Manitoba.
Steve Shand, 48, waived the indictment reading before delivering the plea by videoconference, in a brief but long overdue arraignment in Duluth, Minnesota.
Mr. Shand pleaded not guilty to one count of bringing people into the United States illegally and one count of transporting them within the country.
A jury trial was first scheduled to open on July 17 in Fergus Falls, Minn., but Judge Leo Brisbois, who has yet to rule on a number of motions, said the final date was up to the judge. who will preside over the matter.
Steve Shand, of Deltona, Florida, was arrested in January 2022 in a remote area of northern Minnesota where U.S. Border Patrol agents intercepted him and two Indian nationals in a rented van.
PHOTO ARCHIVE THE CANADIAN PRESS
steve shand
Just across the border near Emerson, Manitoba, Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers discovered the bodies of four people who authorities say froze to death while attempting to enter the United States on foot. Mr. Shand is not charged in relation to these deaths.
Court documents filed at the time say it wasn’t long before officers came upon a group of five Indian migrants who were walking through a threatening blizzard with temperatures of -35C towards where Steve Shand was arrested in Minnesota.
One was carrying a backpack containing children’s clothes, toys and a diaper which he said belonged to a family of four who had become separated from the group during their 12-hour nighttime odyssey .
Relatives identified the victims as Jagdish Patel, 39, his wife Vaishaliben, 37, and their two children: 11-year-old Vihangi and three-year-old Dharmik.
Indian police said they have since charged three men who allegedly acted as intermediaries for the family and provided them with documents.
The three men — unrelated Dashrath Chaudhary, Yogesh Patel and Bhavesh Patel — face charges of culpable homicide, attempted culpable homicide, human trafficking and criminal conspiracy.
U.S. authorities suspect the case is linked to a larger human smuggling operation — a problem long associated with activity along the southern border with Mexico, but which some lawmakers in Washington say is gaining momentum. magnitude at the northern border.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 11,583 “encounters” with non-Canadian citizens in April at or near the northern border, up from 5,317 in April 2022.
For fiscal year 2023, similar encounters already total 76,471, more than the 68,935 recorded in the entire 12 months of fiscal year 2022.