Manitoba border deaths: Jury finds men guilty of human smuggling [Video]

FERGUS FALLS, Minn. –

A jury has found two men guilty on human smuggling charges in a case where a family from India froze to death in Manitoba while trying to walk across the Canada-U.S. border.

Steve Shand and Harshkumar Patel were each convicted Friday on all four counts they faced related to bringing unauthorized people into the U.S., transporting them and profiting from it.

“This trial exposed the unthinkable cruelty of human smuggling and of those criminal organizations that value profit and greed over humanity,” said U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger.

“To earn a few thousand dollars, these traffickers put men, women and children in extraordinary peril … a father, mother and two children froze to death in sub-zero temperatures on the Minnesota-Canadian border.

“The words ‘immoral depravity’ are the best that I have to describe the conduct that led to this terrible, terrible result.”

Possible sentencing dates were suggested for March.

The prosecution had argued Shand and Patel were part …