Grand jury indicts Florida man accused in human smuggling near Manitoba-U.S. border
CBC
A grand jury in Minneapolis has indicted a man who was arrested near the Manitoba-U.S. border last month, accused of involvement in a human smuggling operation.
Steve Anthony Shand, 47, was indicted on two counts of human smuggling, acting United States attorney Charles J. Kovats said in a news release on Thursday.
On Jan. 19, U.S. Border Patrol officers stopped a 15-passenger van about one kilometre south of the international border in a rural area between the official ports of entry at Lancaster, Minn., and Pembina, N.D., the U.S. Attorney's Office for the district of Minnesota said last month.
Shand, who was driving the van, was arrested and charged with human smuggling.
He was transporting two undocumented Indian nationals in the passenger van when he was arrested, according to court documents filed last month with the U.S. District Court in Minnesota.
Five other undocumented Indian nationals were also arrested around the same time, very close to where Shand was arrested, the affidavit said.
The same day, the bodies of a family from the Gujarat region of India — Jagdish Baldevbhai Patel, 39, Vaishaliben Jagdishkumar Patel, 37, and their children, Vihangi Jagdishkumar Patel, 11, and Dharmik Jagdishkumar Patel, 3 — were discovered near the border.
It has been determined they died of exposure to extreme weather conditions while trying to walk across the Canada-U.S. border near Emerson, Man., on Jan. 19.
It's believed the family of four, along with the two people in the van with Shand when he was arrested and the five others arrested nearby, were all part of a group trying to cross the border from Canada to the U.S., but that the family had become separated from the rest.
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