More than three years after a family of four from India froze to death while trying to enter the U.S. along a remote stretch of the Canadian border in a blizzard, the convicted ringleader of an international human smuggling plot was sentenced in Minnesota on Wednesday to 10 years in prison. Federal prosecutors had recommended nearly 20 years for Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, and nearly 11 years for the driver who was supposed to pick them up, Steve Anthony Shand, who got 6 1/2 years Wednesday. “The crime in many respects is extraordinary because it did result in the unimaginable death of four individuals, including two children,” U.S. District Judge John Tunheim said. “These were deaths that were clearly avoidable.” Defense attorney Thomas Leinenweber told the court before sentencing that Patel maintains his innocence and argued he was no more than a “low man on the totem pole.” He asked for time served, 18 months. But acting U.S. Attorney Lisa Kirkpatrick said Patel exploited the migrants’ hopes for a better life in America, out of his own greed. “We should make no mistake, it was the defendant’s greed that set in motion the facts that bring us here today,” she said. Patel, in an orange uniform and handcuffed, declined to address the court. He showed no visible emotion as the sentence was issued. He is likely to be deported to his native India after completing his sentence. He cooperated as marshals handcuffed him and led him from the courtroom. The judge handed down the sentence at the federal courthouse in the northwestern Minnesota city of Fergus Falls, where the two men were tried and convicted on four counts apiece last November. Tunheim declined last month to set aside the guilty verdicts, writing, “This was not a close case.” The smuggling operation Prosecutors said during the trial that Patel, an Indian national who they say went by the alias “Dirty Harry,” and Shand, a U.S. citizen from Florida, were part of a sophisticated illegal operation that brought dozens of people from India to Canada on student visas and then smuggled them across the U.S. border. They said the victims, Jagdish Patel, 39; his wife, Vaishaliben, who was in her mid-30s; their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi; and 3-year-old son, Dharmik, froze to death. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police found their bodies just north of the border between Manitoba and Minnesota on Jan. 19, 2022. The family was from Dingucha, a village in the western Indian state of Gujarat, as was Harshkumar Patel. Patel is a common Indian surname, and the victims were not related to the defendant. The couple were schoolteachers, local news reports said. So many villagers have gone overseas in hopes of better lives — legally and otherwise — that many homes there stand vacant. Harsh blizzard conditions The father died while trying to shield Dharmik’s face from a “blistering wind” with a frozen glove, prosecutor Michael McBride wrote. Vihangi was wearing “ill-fitting boots and gloves.” Their mother “died slumped against a chain-link fence she must have thought salvation lay behind,” McBride wrote. A nearby weather station recorded the wind chill that morning at -36 Fahrenheit (-38 Celsius). Seven other members of their group survived the foot crossing, but only two made it to Shand’s van, which was stuck in the snow on the Minnesota side. One woman who survived […]