FLORIDA MAN PLEADS NOT GUILTY AFTER CANADA-UNITED STATES HUMAN-SMUGGLING TRAGEDY IN MANITOBA

A Florida man pleaded not guilty to human smuggling charges Friday in a case linked to the discovery last year of a family of four migrants from India found frozen to death just steps from the Canada-U.S. border.

Steve Shand, 48, waived the reading of the indictment before entering the plea via video conference as part of a brief but long-awaited arraignment in Duluth, Minn.

“Not guilty,” Mr. Shand said when asked by Minnesota magistrate Judge Leo Brisbois how he was pleading to the charges – one count each of bringing people into the U.S. illegally and of transporting them inside the country.

A jury trial had been scheduled for July 17 in Fergus Falls, Minn., but Justice Brisbois – who has yet to rule on a number of discovery and production motions – said the final date depends on the trial judge.

Mr. Shand, from Deltona, Fla., was arrested in January, 2022, in a remote area of northern Minnesota, where U.S. Border Patrol officers encountered him with two Indian nationals in a rented passenger van.

Just over the border, near Emerson, Man., RCMP officers discovered the bodies of four people authorities believe died of exposure while trying to slip into the U.S. on foot. Mr. Shand is not charged in the deaths.

Court documents filed at the time say it wasn’t long before agents encountered a group of five Indian migrants as they trudged through a forbidding blizzard and -35 C temperatures toward the location where Mr. Shand was arrested.

One of them was carrying a backpack containing children’s clothes, toys and a diaper that he said belonged to a family of four that had become separated from the larger group during their 12-hour overnight odyssey.

Relatives have identified the victims as Jagdish Patel, 39, his wife Vaishaliben, 37, and their two children: daughter Vihangi, 11, and three-year-old son Dharmik.

Police in India say they have since charged three men who allegedly acted as immigration agents for the family and provided them with paperwork.