Wind chills had dropped to minus 36 Fahrenheit (minus 38 Celsius) that night in January 2022 as they walked through vast farm fields and heavy snow, navigating the treacherous terrain.

The driver, who was waiting in northern Minnesota, texted his boss: “Make sure everyone is dressed for blizzard conditions please.”

Coordinating the operation in Canada was Harshkumar Patel, an experienced smuggler known as “Dirty Harry,” while in the U.S. it was Steve Shand, a driver recruited by Patel at a Florida casino, according to federal prosecutors.

The two men, whose trial is scheduled to begin Monday, are accused of being part of a sophisticated people-smuggling operation that feeds a rapidly growing population of Indians living illegally in the US. Both pleaded not guilty.

Details of the smuggling operation

Over a five-week period, prosecutors say the two men regularly communicated about the cold temperatures as they smuggled several groups of Indians across the quiet stretch of the border.

“16 degrees cold as hell,” relayed Shand on an earlier trip. “Will they be alive when they get here?”

On their last journey on January 19, 2022, the Shand was supposed to pick up 11 Indian migrants, including Patel. Tragically, only seven of them survived.

Canadian authorities found the Patels’ bodies later that morning. Jagdish Patel was holding his 3-year-old son, Dharmik, wrapped in a blanket, frozen to death.

The narrow streets of Dingucha, a quiet village in the western Indian state of Gujarat, are strewn with advertisements to move overseas.

“Make your dream of going abroad come true,” says one poster, which lists three tempting destinations: “Canada. Australia. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.”

This is where the family’s deadly journey began.

Jagdish Patel, 39, grew up in Dingucha. He and his wife, Vaishaliben, who was in her 30s, lived with his parents, raising their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi, and Dharmik. The couple was a school teacher, local news reports said.

The family was quite well-off by local standards, living in a well-maintained two-story house with a front terrace and wide verandah.

“It was not a lavish life,” said Vaibhav Jha, a local reporter who spent days in the village. “But there was no urgent need, no desperation.”

Experts say illegal immigration from India is driven by everything from political repression to a dysfunctional U.S. immigration system that can take years, if not decades, to navigate legally.

But much is rooted in economics and how even low-wage jobs in the West can spark hopes for a better life.

These hopes changed Dingucha.

Today, so many villagers have gone abroad – legally and otherwise – that blocks of houses remain vacant, and the social networks of those who remain are filled with old neighbors showing off houses and cars.

That causes even more people to leave.

“There was so much pressure in the village, where people grew up aspiring for a good life,” Jha said.

The role of smuggling networks and legal challenges

Smuggling rings were happy to help, charging fees that could reach $90,000 per person. In Dingucha, Jha said, many families afforded it by selling agricultural land.

Satveer Chaudhary is a Minneapolis immigration attorney who has helped migrants exploited by motel owners, many of them Gujaratis.

Smugglers with ties to the Gujarati business community have built an underground network, he said, bringing in workers willing to do low-wage or no-wage jobs.

“Their own community took advantage of them,” Chaudhary said.

The illegal immigration pipeline from India has been around for a long time, but it has grown suddenly along the US-Canada border.

The US Border Patrol arrested more than 14,000 Indians at the Canadian border in the year ending Sept. 30, which was 60 percent of all arrests along that border and more than 10 times the number two years ago.

By 2022, the Pew Research Center estimates that there were more than 725,000 Indians living illegally in the US, trailing only Mexicans and Salvadorans.

In India, Dilip Thakor, an investigating officer, revealed that media attention led to the arrest of three men in connection with the Patel case. However, many such cases never reach court.

With so many Indians trying to reach the US, smuggling rings see no reason to warn their clients about the dangers involved. They “tell people it’s very easy to cross into the US. I never tell them about the dangers involved,” said Thakor.

US prosecutors allege that Patel and Shand were part of a sprawling operation with people looking for business in India, obtaining Canadian student visas, arranging transport and bringing migrants into the US, mostly through Washington state or Minnesota.

On Monday in federal court in Fergus Falls, Minn., Patel, 29, and Shand, 50, will each face four counts of people-smuggling.

Patel’s attorney, Thomas Leinenweber, told The Associated Press that his client came to America to escape poverty and build a better life for himself and “is now wrongfully accused of participating in this horrific crime.”

Shand’s attorney did not return calls seeking comment. Prosecutors say Shand told investigators that Patel paid him about $25,000 for the five trips.

Its last passengers, however, never made it.

Last Night: Tragedy on the Border

By 3 a.m. on January 19, 2022, the 11 Indian migrants spent hours wandering in gusts of snow and brutal cold trying to find Shand. Many were in jeans and rubber work boots. Neither wore serious winter clothing.

Shand, however, was stuck. Prosecutors say he was on his way to the pickup site in a 15-passenger rental van when it went into a ditch about half a mile (0.8 kilometers) from the border.

Eventually, two migrants came across the van. Sometime later, a passing pipeline company worker pulled the vehicle out of the ditch.

A short time later, a US Border Patrol agent, on patrol for migrants after boot prints were found near the border, stopped Shand.

Shand repeatedly insisted that there was no one else outside, even as five more desperate Indians made their way to the vehicle from the field, including one who was drifting in and out of consciousness.

They had been walking for more than 11 hours.

There were no children among the migrants, but one man had a backpack full of toys, baby clothes and diapers. He said a family of four Indians asked him to hold him because they had to carry their youngest son.

Sometime in the night they had parted.

A few hours later, the bodies of the Patels were found in Canada itself, in a field near where the migrants had crossed into the US.

Jagdish was holding Dharmik, with daughter Vihangi nearby. Vaishaliben was a short walk away.

The community responds to the tragedy

Hemant Shah, an Indian-born businessman who lives in Winnipeg, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) north of where the migrants were found, helped organize a virtual prayer service for Patel.

He is used to harsh winters and cannot understand the suffering they have endured.

“How could these people have thought to go and cross the border?” Shah said.

Greed, he said, took four lives: “There was no humanity.”