An Indian national accused of smuggling a family of four who froze to death near the Manitoba-U.S. border has lost his bid to be released from custody while awaiting trial.
An American judge ordered Harshkumar Patel, 28, to be held in solitary confinement while he is in federal custody in an undisclosed corrections facility.
Patel has pleaded not guilty to seven human smuggling charges since being arrested in Chicago in February. He initially waived a detention hearing.
Sherburne County Sheriff
In court papers in Minneapolis, prosecutors allege the 28-year-old Patel had been warned of blizzard conditions that saw an Indian family freeze to death in 2022 while trying to cross into the U.S. on foot in the dead of winter.
He sought to be released, however, after a grand jury returned the seven-count superseding indictment in March.
At an April 26 hearing in Duluth, Minn., Patel’s defence lawyer told a U.S. district court the suspect would live with his fiancée, an American citizen, and her parents in Savannah, Tenn., if released.
The U.S. argued Patel is a flight risk with ties to India and Canada, and his release would present safety concerns.
Patel, who went by the alias “Dirty Harry,” entered the U.S. illegally from Canada, according to court documents.
Magistrate Judge Leo Brisbois sided with the U.S., saying no conditions could reasonably assure Patel will appear in court in the future.
“The defendant is committed to the custody of the Attorney General for confinement in a corrections facility separate, to the extent practicable, from persons awaiting or serving sentences or being held in custody pending appeal,” Brisbois wrote in a decision released Friday.
The judge noted Patel could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison, if convicted.
Patel is also subject to an immigration detainer, which is a request to hold him until he can be taken into federal immigration custody for proceedings.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Amritbhai Vakil
Police in India say two men are facing charges in the deaths of a family who froze a year ago while trying to cross from Manitoba into the United States. Jagdish Baldevbhai Patel (left to right), son Dharmik Jagdishkumar Patel, wife and mother Vaishaliben Jagdishkumar Patel and daughter Vihangi Jagdishkumar Patel are shown in a handout photo.
A jury trial for Patel and co-accused Steve Shand, 49, is scheduled to begin June 24. Shand has pleaded not guilty to four charges.
At a hearing Thursday, Shand asked a judge to dismiss evidence from the traffic stop that led to his arrest. He is awaiting the judge’s decision.
Prosecutors allege Patel hired Shand, from Deltona, Fla., to pick up Indian nationals on the Minnesota side of the border and drive them to the Chicago area.
Shand was arrested just south of the border in January 2022, after a U.S. border patrol agent spotted him and two Indian migrants in a rental van, court documents said. Five other migrants were found walking nearby.
The frozen bodies of the family of four from India — Jagdishkumar Patel, 39, Vaishaliben Patel, 37, their daughter Vihangi, 11, and three-year-old son Dharmik — were later found by RCMP in a field east of Emerson.
fpcity@freepress.mb.ca