One in all two males convicted in a human smuggling operation alongside the Canada-U.S. border has been granted approval to proceed together with his enchantment in the US with out a lawyer.
Harshkumar Patel was sentenced to only over 10 years in jail final yr, after a Minnesota jury discovered him responsible of being a part of the smuggling ring that noticed folks from India delivered to Canada on pupil visas then pushed to areas close to the border and instructed to stroll throughout.
On one journey in 2022, a pair and their two youngsters froze to demise whereas strolling in a single day in a blizzard from southern Manitoba into Minnesota.
The trial was instructed Patel helped arrange that journey and others whereas his co-accused — Steve Shand, who was sentenced to six 1/2 years — labored as a driver and picked up migrants as soon as they crossed into the US.
Each males have filed appeals — Shand by means of a lawyer and Patel on his personal, after courtroom accredited his utility to self-represent.
Patel’s enchantment focuses on seven arguments, together with an assertion that the prosecution didn’t show he introduced or tried to deliver aliens into the U.S. away from an official entry level.
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It’s one of many 4 counts that Patel and Shand had been convicted of of their 2024 trial in Minnesota district courtroom.
“The proof on the appellant’s trial was wholly inadequate to reveal that he was linked to conduct that occurred earlier than the entry of unlawful aliens to the US,” Patel’s temporary reads.
“Though the federal government linked him to Shand … there was no different proof exhibiting any direct interplay with the aliens.”
Patel additionally argues the household from India died as a consequence of different folks’s actions, not his, and that there have been “procedural errors” in figuring out his sentence.
Shand’s enchantment, filed in November, submits the border patrol agent who discovered the van with migrants inside didn’t have affordable justification to cease the automobile. Shand’s lawyer additionally says the household’s deaths weren’t “causally linked” to Shand’s actions.
The frozen our bodies of Jagdish Patel, 39; his spouse Vaishaliben Patel, 37; their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi; and their three-year-old son, Dharmik, had been discovered metres from the border in January 2022.
Patel is a standard identify in India, and the household was not associated to Harshkumar Patel.
The temperature was -23 C and the wind chill had dipped beneath -35. There have been no buildings or timber to supply shelter. The trial was instructed smugglers on the Canadian facet of the border had given the household and several other different migrants denims, skinny jackets, and hats and mitts designed for hotter climate.
One who made it throughout the border suffered extreme hypothermia and was flown to Minneapolis for remedy.
North of the border, a person residing in Brampton, Ont. — Fenil Patel — was arrested final September on an extradition request from the US. He’s accused of taking part within the smuggling ring.
© 2026 The Canadian Press
