HOUSTON: A Florida man has pleaded not guilty to human smuggling charges 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-US border, according to media reports.
Steve Shand, 48, waived the reading of the indictment before entering the plea via videoconference as part of a brief but long-awaited arraignment in Duluth, Minnesota.
Shand is accused of illegally bringing migrants from India into the US during a frigid January night in 2022, a newspaper reported.
“Not guilty,” 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 US illegally and of transporting them inside the country.
He was arrested in January 2022 in a remote area of northern Minnesota, where US border agents encountered him with two Indian nationals in a rented passenger van.
Just over the border in Manitoba, 12 metres from the Canada-US border, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police discovered the bodies of four persons authorities believe froze to death while trying to slip into the US undetected, a news agency reported. Relatives identified the victims as Jagdish Patel (39), his wife Vaishaliben (37), daughter Vihangi (11) and three-year-old son Dharmik.