Human traffickers sentenced after deaths of family at US-Canada border [Video]

A pair of human traffickers received sentences of 10 and 6.5 years on Wednesday following the deaths of an Indian family, including two children, who froze during a blizzard in 2022 while attempting to illegally cross the northern border into the U.S. from Canada.

Announcing the sentences, U.S. District Judge John Tunheim said, “The crime in many respects is extraordinary because it did result in the unimaginable death of four individuals, including two children,” according to AP.

The outlet reported that Tunheim said, “These were deaths that were clearly avoidable.”

This follows a jury in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, finding the two, Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, 29, and Steve Shand, 50, guilty on four counts, including conspiracy to bring migrants into the country illegally.

Patel, who is an Indian national, received a sentence of nearly 11 years. Shand, a U.S. citizen from Florida, received 6.5 years with two years’ supervised release. AP reported that neither of the men …