Investigation: Family who died near Minnesota-Canada border were victims of human smuggling

CATHY WURZER: You might remember hearing about the story, earlier this year, of an immigrant family found dead along the Minnesota-Canadian border. It was dangerously cold, the night the Patel family started their journey from Canada into Minnesota. There was deep blowing snow and whiteout conditions.

The Patels died just feet from the US-Canadian border in January of this year. Their deaths are the subject of a new television documentary investigation from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Here's a clip of audio that includes the 911 call from the person who found the family.

SPEAKER 1: There are three of them. I can see the infant--

SPEAKER 2: Oh!

SPEAKER 1: --baby and probably about a nine or 10-year-old and their father. See another body over by the Canadian gas plant here.

SPEAKER 2: Oh my--

SPEAKER 1: And I walked away. So there's more up here. It's horrible I guess. When I came up here--

CATHY WURZER: The Patels were immigrants from India and victims of human smugglers. How did this happen? How could have it been prevented? Steven D'souza is the co-host for the CBC's The Fifth Estate, Canada's premier investigative documentary program. He's on the line. Steven, it's good to talk with you. Thanks for joining us.

STEVEN D'SOUZA: Thanks for having me, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: I understand that one man has been charged in connection with the deaths. Homeland Security in Minnesota here charged a 47-year-old Florida man with human smuggling. He was arrested southwest of where the Patels were found. What do we know about Steve Shand and the people he had been transporting?

STEVEN D'SOUZA: So Steve Shand was found the morning of January 19th driving a 15-seat passenger van. And it initially broken down on the highway just south of the border crossing. And so a local tow truck driver helped him.

And then later on, he was found again by Border Patrol and he was-- he had two undocumented Indian migrants with him. And so immediately, Border Patrol took the three of them into custody. And as they were taking care of that, they noticed five other Indian migrants walking down the road. And so those five migrants were also taken into custody.

And some of them were in pretty bad shape, suffering from hypothermia. One eventually had to have her hand partially amputated. And this is where things took a bit of a tragic turn. The officers noted that one of the members of this group, this migrant group, was carrying a backpack with toddler clothing and supplies, but there was no toddler in this group.

And so that's when they realized that there was more people in the group still out there. And so they immediately began a search the County Sheriff's Office that you heard a bit of their audio there, as well as the RCMP on the Canadian side of the border.

And for about four or five hours, they searched, and that's when they came across the bodies of the Patel family. It was the father, Jagdish Patel, and his wife, Vaishali, and their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi, and three-year-old son, Dharmik. The father and the two children were found together, and the mother was just a few feet away. And as you mentioned, they were just feet from the US border, but still quite aways from where they were hoping to be picked up by somebody on the US side.

CATHY WURZER: We saw the photo of the family widely publicized in the days after their deaths, and they were just this beautiful family. It's heartbreaking. And I know that you obtained video of the family at the airport, the last known footage of them before they died. It must be difficult, even as a journalist, watching that.

STEVEN D'SOUZA: It was. And I have two young children. I have an older daughter and a younger son. And so when I saw that family photo, I saw almost a reflection of my own family. My son is about the same age as Dharmik was.

And we've seen-- in our documentary, we have photos and home videos of them. And then you see this image of them arriving at Toronto's Pearson Airport about seven days before their bodies were found. And you could just tell they had no idea-- likely no idea of what was to come in the days ahead.

And they came with a sparse amount of luggage. It's not clear what actually happened to that luggage. And one of the details that really stuck out to me was on top of the luggage was a little blue baby blanket, and it was Dharmik's blanket that he's had since a baby. Because we had baby photos of him sitting on that blanket. It's baby blue with yellow rubber duckies.

And I mean, as a father of a child, I mean, my son, if we were to go on a trip, of course, we were going to-- we would bring the thing that he loves the most. And you could tell that that was something cherished for Dharmik and something the parents wouldn't go on a journey without. And so seeing those-- seeing that little detail really was just another emotional gut punch in a story for all of them.

CATHY WURZER: Exactly. And you and your producers have done such a good job with this story, digging so deep into the background. You were able to talk with some of the family members. And we're going to play a clip right now from the report. This is Jagdish's father speaking hindi.

NARRATOR: In his first televised interview, Jagdish's father, Baldev Patel, struggles to put their nightmare into words.

BALDEV PATEL: [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

CATHY WURZER: What do you know about Jagdish and Dharmik Patel? Who were they?

STEVEN D'SOUZA: So Jagdish and his wife, Vaishali, they were teachers. They seem to have relatively comfortable lives in rural India. The father, Baldev, who you heard there said his son didn't want for anything. That he provided everything a father could for the son to have a good life.

The father is a farmer, and so he has a large plot of land. Jagdish's older brother, Mahendra, has a textile business, which Jagdish had worked at as well. And so they seem to have a relatively comfortable middle class life.

But when you speak-- when we spoke to the family, they talked about Jagdish wanting to provide a better future for his children. And that to do that, the dream was to go to the United States. And this is something that's been happening for generations.

People from Gujarat, at the northern Indian state of Gujarat have long been coming to the United States and in Canada as well and establishing businesses. And then after that, family members will join them.

But what's happened, and especially in the United States, legal immigration has been cut back drastically to the point where one of our experts told us that if a family member, a citizen living in the US wanted to sponsor a family member from India to come over, it would take them 25 to 30 years for that paperwork to come through.

And so what ends up happening is people like Jagdish Patel turn to this alternate, parallel, illegal immigration system that's essentially run by human smugglers who are promising them an easy path out of their villages to get to the United States, but they don't talk about the risks involved.

I'm sure Jagdish Patel and his wife, Vaishali, if they knew that they were going to have to traverse an open prairie field in minus 35 Celsius weather, a winter storm-- where even the locals we talked to said they wouldn't dare venture out that night. If they knew that that's what they were going through, I'm sure they would think twice about that.

But I'm sure that's not the, kind of, trip that they were sold. And so what you have is these parents who ultimately want to just deliver for their children and provide a better opportunity for their children ending up putting their children in these dangerous situations.

CATHY WURZER: In your reporting, have you found-- because the Patels were so close to the Minnesota border, were they heading in our direction, south? Was there someone waiting for them?

STEVEN D'SOUZA: We believe there was somebody waiting for them. It might have been Steve Shand. We don't know that for sure. But we do-- we believe that they were ultimately headed for the Chicago area. Because when the funeral was held in Winnipeg-- the bodies weren't repatriated back to India. The funeral was held in Winnipeg.

Some family members came from India, but some family members also came from the Chicago area. And there was a GoFundMe with money raised in the Chicago area as well. So we believe that that's where their ultimate destination was. So unfortunately, for Minnesotans as well as even folks in Winnipeg, it seems that they're bystanders in this tragedy and the Patel family was passing through.

CATHY WURZER: Any arrests made?

STEVEN D'SOUZA: No. And that's a really heartbreaking part about all of this. Apart from Steve Shand, there hasn't been any other arrests made directly relating to this case. The police went to Toronto where the family landed, and they know that they were taken to a hotel from the airport. That they stayed in another hotel in a private residence.

But from January 15th, a hotel stay on January 15th till the night of the 18th and the morning of the 19th, there's a gap in the timeline. So police still don't know how they got from Toronto to that spot on the Manitoba border.

And so it's difficult because they say some people are cooperating with them, the people who've interacted with the Patels. But in some cases, they may be afraid to open up because they're afraid of repercussions for themselves or maybe because of their own immigration situation.

CATHY WURZER: Such an important story. Are you continuing to investigate?

STEVEN D'SOUZA: Yeah. There's an individual on the West Coast named Rajinder Pal Singh who was arrested in charge for operating a human smuggling operation on the US West Coast near Blaine, Washington. And he was caught on surveillance back in January talking about the border and Washington being too hot right now. That Border Patrol is cracking down. So they need to move people through Winnipeg.

So this was happening at the same time the Patels were being moved. So our theory is perhaps the family was destined to go to Washington. But because of the crackdown, perhaps the smugglers moved them to a lesser used crossing in Manitoba, more dangerous crossing in Manitoba and Minnesota border.

There's no direct evidence linking Rajinder Pal Singh right now to the Patels, but the RCMP here in Canada are investigating him. And he goes on trial next year. And so we're going to be looking into any information that comes out of his trial.

We're going to be keeping a close eye on Steve Shand when he's back in court in November. I think his trial is still coming-- still yet to come later after that. And so we're going to try to keep our eyes open as much as possible because there really was a hole in people's heart after this story.

And we really want to find some answers and get down to the heart of it. And just even try to answer, who was the person who left them at this border and pointed across a field in the middle of the night and said-- and left them at the mercy of the elements? It's just heartbreaking.

CATHY WURZER: It is. Excellent work, Steven. Thank you so much.

STEVEN D'SOUZA: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

CATHY WURZER: Steven D'souza is the co-host for the CBC show, The Fifth Estate, the documentary investigating the deaths of this family of immigrants from India, aired Thursday. We'll have a link to their reporting on our website, mprnews.org.