Star Tribune
Two men indicted in case of four Indian nationals who froze to death at border
A federal grand jury has indicted Steve Shand and Harshkumar Patel over their alleged role in trying to illegally bring a group of Indian nationals across the Canadian border into the United States in a case that led to a family of four freezing to death.
The deaths of Jagdish Patel, 39, Vaishaliben Patel, 37, and their two children Vihangi, 11, and Dharmik, 3, in January 2022, spurred sprawling investigations into the illicit immigration pipeline to the U.S. from their home state of Gujarat in western India. Authorities discovered the four bodies frozen in Emerson, Manitoba, and found five other Indian immigrants on foot and two more in a van driven by Shand in a rural area between Lancaster, Minn., and Pembina, N.D..
Shand, of Deltona, Fla., was scheduled to face trial next Monday in Fergus Falls on two counts of illegally bringing in and transporting undocumented immigrants, but the long-delayed proceedings were postponed again Friday.
The seven-count superseding indictment filed this week includes far more extensive criminal allegations against Shand and and says he acted with Harshkumar Patel, who was arrested in Chicago last month and is now in the Sherburne County Jail in Elk River, Minn. Gujarati police have also arrested a series of smugglers in connection with the case in India.
Attorneys for both men could not immediately be reached for comment.
The grand jury found that Shand and Patel conspired to bring and transport unauthorized immigrants to the U.S., causing serious bodily injury and placing lives in jeopardy. The indictment said the pair brought or tried to bring them, aided and abetted their journey, and that Shand and Patel transported them for commercial advantage and private financial gain.
Authorities said in a complaint filed against Patel last September that they conducted a forensic examination of Shand’s phone and found he had been communicating on WhatsApp with Patel, whom he knew as “Dirty Harry,” about rental cars, hotels and payments to Shand. Messages discussed what time Shand should travel to the border to pick up the Indian nationals.
Shand said in a March 2022 interview with federal agents that he met Patel at a gambling establishment in Orange City, Fla., where Patel was a manager and Shand used to pick up and drop off clients in his taxi. Authorities said they believed that Patel had entered the U.S. without legal permission from Canada after being denied an American visa at least five times.
Shand said Patel recruited him to transport undocumented immigrants from the Canadian border in Minnesota to the Chicago area for money. Shand told authorities that he had made five such trips between December 2021 and January 2022, including the one in which he was arrested.
Because the immigrants did not speak English and Shand did not speak their native language of Gujarati, he would put his phone on speaker so that the Indian nationals could communicate with Patel. Shand told authorities that Patel paid him about $25,000 for the five smuggling trips, dropping off cash in his mailbox or with Shand’s adult son, according to the complaint.
The day the family of four died in subzero temperatures, Shand texted Patel, “Make sure everyone is dressed for the blizzard conditions please.”
“Done,” Patel replied at 1 a.m., according to the complaint.
Eight hours later, Patel messaged him, “When ever you at the spot let me know.”
Authorities stopped Shand and the Indian nationals on foot that morning. One of the men in the group told investigators that he was carrying a backpack of children’s items for a family of four who had gotten separated from them during the night. A search led to the discovery of Jagdish Patel and his family, lying frozen just a few dozen feet from the international border.
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and her daughter were among the throngs Friday as President Joe Biden delivered the apology that many Indigenous Americans thought would never come.
“I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities,” said Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. “It’s a powerful first step towards healing.”
Hundreds of boarding schools operated in the 19th and 20th centuries, separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to assimilate to European ways. Many children were abused, and at least 973 died, according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Other Minnesotans reacted similarly to Flanagan, saying they welcomed the apology but that additional action is needed to help Indigenous people move forward.
Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, wrote in a newsletter that the apology was “a welcome first step on the journey to healing.”
“There is no way to truly right historical injustices for the children buried at Carlisle, Haskell, and other schools, but these words set a new tone for the country and will help heal the anguish so many Natives have carried for so long,” Treuer wrote. “It gives me hope that we can come together to reconcile and heal our troubled nation.”
Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, the first Indigenous woman to serve in the state Senate, called Biden’s apology encouraging.
“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems,” Kunesh said in a statement. “This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught.”
“I have done everything in my power to remedy this situation, and it continues to get more and more violent by the day,” Moturi wrote. “There have been numerous times when I’ve seen Sawchak outside and contacted law enforcement, and there was no response. I am not confident in the pursuit of Sawchak given that Sawchak attacked me, MPD officers had John detained, and despite an HRO and multiple warrants — they still let him go.”
On Friday, five City Council members sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressing their “utter horror at MPD’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
Council Members Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley went on to allege that police had failed to submit reports to the County Attorney’s Office despite threats being made with weapons, and at times while Sawchak screamed racial slurs. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
The council members also contend in their letter that the MPD told the County Attorney’s Office that police did not intend to execute the warrant for “reasons of officer safety.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference at MPD’s Fifth Precinct, O’Hara said police had been working to arrest Sawchak since at least April, but “no Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case has been calling us.” The chief pointed out that Sawchak is mentally ill, has guns and refuses to cooperate “in the dozens of times that police officers have responded to the residence.”
O’Hara put aside the option to carry out “a high-risk warrant based on these factors [and] the likelihood of an armed, violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect.” The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside his home, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
ROCHESTER – The Federal Transit Administration has green-lighted an $85 million grant supporting the development of the city’s planned Link Bus Rapid Transit system.
The FTA formally announced the grant on Friday during a ceremonial check presentation outside of the Mayo Civic Center, one of the seven stops planned for the bus line. The federal grant will cover about 60% of the project’s estimated $143.4 million price tag, with the remaining funds coming from Destination Medical Center, the largest public-private development project in state history.
Set to go live in 2026, the 2.8-mile Link system will connect downtown Rochester, including Mayo Clinic’s campuses, with a proposed “transit village” that will include parking, hundreds of housing units and a public plaza. The bus line will be the first of its kind outside the Twin Cities — with service running every five minutes during peak hours.
“That means you may not even need to look at a schedule,” said Veronica Vanterpool, deputy administrator for the FTA. “You can just show up at your transit stop and expect the next bus to come in a short time. That is a game changer and a life-transformational experience in transit for those people who are using it and relying on it.”
The planned Second Street corridor is already one of the busiest roads in Rochester, carrying more than 21,800 vehicles a day, and city planners have talked for years about ways to reduce traffic congestion in the city’s downtown. Local officials estimate that the transit line, which will rely on a fleet of all-electric buses, will handle 11,000 riders on its first day of operation and save eight city blocks of parking.
Speaking to a crowd of about 100 people gathered on Friday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said the project shows Rochester is thinking strategically about how it handles growth.
“If you just plan the business expansion, and you don’t have the workforce, you don’t have the child care, the housing or the transit, it’s not going to work very well as a lot of communities across the nation have found,” Klobuchar said.
