RCMP want to know who helped family get from Toronto to remote border area
The RCMP is looking for members of a suspected human smuggling ring who helped a family from India get from Toronto airport to a remote border area of Manitoba shortly before freezing to death during an attempt to illegally cross into the United States during a blizzard.
The members of the family, including two children, and their cause of death, exposure to cold, were confirmed Thursday as police announced a far-reaching investigation into human smuggling and the family’s movements in Canada.
Also Thursday, police in India detained six people in a crackdown on illegal immigration relating to the family’s travel. The arrested people ran a travel and tourism company in Gujarat, the region the family is from, said police official A.K. Jhala in the state capital of Gandhinagar.
“We are now trying to nab the human traffickers who managed to send this family and others abroad via illegal channels,” Jhala said.
The dead — a father, mother, daughter and son — were identified by India’s High Commission in Ottawa as Jagdish Baldevbhai Patel, 39; his wife, Vaishaliben Jagdishkumar Patel, 37; their daughter, Vihangi Jagdishkumar Patel, 11; and their son, Dharmik Jagdishkumar Patel, 3.
The RCMP gave the father’s first name as Jagdishkumar. An Indian diplomat said the difference is due to naming conventions in India.
Manitoba RCMP Chief Supt. Rob Hill said the family arrived in Canada at Toronto by air on Jan. 12 and then travelled to Manitoba. They arrived in Emerson, near the U.S. border, shortly before their fateful trek.
“There was no abandoned vehicle located on the Canadian side of the border. This indicates that someone drove the family to the border and then left the scene,” Hill said.
The RCMP is trying to trace “every aspect of their travel” from Toronto on Jan. 12, to Emerson on Jan. 18 and has asked the public to help.
“We need anyone who had interaction with the Patel family or has information about their journey to the border to think about what they went through and step forward,” he said.
He asked hotel workers, restaurant staff, store clerks and customers, gas station attendants, taxi drivers — anyone who may have seen them — to contact police.
“We believe this to be a case of human smuggling,” he said, and investigators are working with American and Indian officials, as well as RCMP liaison officers in New Delhi and Washington, D.C.
“We are determined to find out how this tragedy occurred,” he said, estimating the probe will take “months and months.”
Passports for the family were found with their bodies, police said.
The autopsies were completed Wednesday and the RCMP informed Indian officials who notified the Patels’ family in India. While it would be an enormous emotional blow, it was not a surprise.
Relatives of the Patels knew they left for Canada and had not heard from them since, a relative was quoted saying in Indian newspapers. When news broke of the deadly border incident, they feared the worse.
In fact, a large virtual prayer service was already held for the Patels on Monday by more than 100 ex-pats from Gujarat in Canada.
Relatives and friends in India’s Gujarat state said the father worked as a teacher and farmed land the family owned.
Hill apologized for the RCMP initially misidentifying one of the child victims as a boy in his mid-teens. He said the bodies were found in a frozen state and their clothing led to the mistake.
The Patel family comprised both the two oldest and two youngest members of a group of 11 Indians who were dropped off near Emerson on Jan. 18, for the organized illegal crossing, according to U.S. officials.
The conditions during that prairie blizzard at night were extremely dangerous. The temperature hovered around -35C with blowing snow and bleak darkness along a remote route they were unfamiliar with.
Most of the migrants wore identical winter clothing, including matching coats, boots, gloves and ski masks, according to U.S. authorities.
Seven made it to safety after more than 11 hours of walking. The Patel family, however, got separated from the group in the night and didn’t even make it out of Canada.
They were found about 12 metres inside the border.
Diplomats for India in Toronto are in contact with the Patel family.
“The High Commission offers its sincere condolences to the family and friends of the victims,” said Chellappan Gurusubramanian, First Secretary at the High Commission of India in Ottawa, in a written statement.
Steve Shand, 47, of Deltona, Fla., was arrested in the morning on Jan. 19, on the U.S. side of the border, hours before the frozen bodies were found.
He was driving a van with two Indian nationals inside, U.S. court documents say. Five other Indian citizens were found walking nearby. Two needed medical assistance and survived.
Shand is facing federal human smuggling charges in Minnesota. On Monday, Shand was granted release from jail until his trial.
A diplomatic team from the Indian government, led by a senior consular officer based in Toronto, is in Manitoba to assist the investigation and to render any consular services for the victims, Gurusubramanian said.
He said Canadian and Indian officials need to have wider and longer term discussions on migration issues, “to ensure that migration and mobility are made safe and legal and that such tragedies do not recur.”
The seven migrants arrested in the United States were turned over to immigration and are being processed for removal, although some may be eligible for visas if they co-operate in Shand’s prosecution, said Veena Iyer, executive director of the Immigration Law Center of Minnesota.
The RCMP asked anyone with information to call the RCMP’S tip line at 431-4898551