PEMBINA, North Dakota. One January morning, the temperature dropped to 20 degrees below zero, and howling winds drove blinding snow when US Border Patrol agents in North Dakota spotted five human figures moving across the barren border where America and Canada meet.
They were migrants from India: listless, disoriented, and determined to reach the United States along one of the most deserted frontiers. They trudged through knee-length snow for 11 hours in total whiteness, and two had to be rushed to the hospital.
But what seemed like a heroic escape quickly turned ominous when agents found a backpack filled with toys and diapers among the migrants’ belongings: a family with children, according to the migrants, was still somewhere out there, in an unrelenting blizzard. Urgent searches involving drones, aircraft, all-terrain vehicles and agents on both sides of the border resulted in the discovery hours later of the icy bodies of a family of four, lost in the snow just 15 yards from the border. U.S.A.
Jagdish Patel, 39, and his wife Vaishali, 37, worked as teachers in the Indian state of Gujarat until schools were closed by Covid-19. With few options in their home village, they paid for smuggling along with their 11-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son to the United States. But the smugglers abandoned them in dangerous terrain along the border.
As security tightens at popular southern checkpoints such as the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, hundreds of migrants annually try their luck along the less fortified border with Canada, where there are no National Guard troops, no scorching desert heat, no towering border wall. .
But the inhospitable northern plains along the North Dakota-Minnesota border can be especially dangerous in the winter, when blizzards sometimes reduce visibility to zero. No mobile phone signal to call for help. There is nowhere to hide. Hypothermia may occur within minutes.
“I doubt this family had the first clue where they were going,” the sergeant said. Mike Jennings, a police detective in nearby Grand Forks, North Dakota: “You can’t see your hand in front of your face when it’s snowing so hard.”
In the area of Pembina, North Dakota, just two miles from the Canadian border, the Indians were not the first to make the trek this winter. Last week, border guards detained an Eritrean who was walking through the snow from Canada. Twice in December and on January 12, operatives found footprints in the snow – migrants who had passed and escaped.
The Patels, as far as Canadian and American officials were later able to reconstruct, were part of a group of 11 Indian migrants gathered in the tiny Canadian town of Emerson and given instructions on how to cross the border on foot.
great reading
Even more fascinating fairy tales that are impossible not to read to the end.
They expected to meet a smuggler on the American side who would take them to their final destination, most likely Illinois, where they had relatives or friends. But the family, perhaps with two children, separated from the rest as the migrants fought their way through the snowy darkness.
An autopsy revealed that they died from exposure to cold, an outcome that was sealed once they had gone astray.
“With a negative wind of 29 degrees, you can get frostbite within minutes,” said Scott Good, the chief border patrol agent in the area. “Nothing will protect you for 11 hours.”
Dream of America
The state of Gujarat has a long history of immigration to the United States, a trend that has only intensified during the pandemic, creating a buoyant demand for smuggling businesses masquerading as travel agencies.
The Patels have fled the state capital of Gandhinagar after losing their teaching jobs during the pandemic. They moved to Dingucha, a farming village of 3,000, where Mr. Patel worked on his father’s land and wholesaled his brother’s clothes.
But he had big ambitions.
Former residents of Dinguch who emigrated to the West became rich and financed the construction of a school, temple and community center in the village.
Travel agency ads affixed to lampposts in the village advertise visas for immigrating and studying in Canada, a country that sometimes offers easier access for immigrants than the United States.
“Free app. The spouse can apply. Offer letter in 3 days,” one of them suggests.
Some guarantee admission to study programs even for those who do not have an English proficiency test, which is usually required.
Whether the agencies keep such promises is unclear, but migrants like Pateli have become commonplace to use the agencies to obtain visas, sometimes under false pretenses, such as for student or tourist visas, when their actual intention is to sneak out. to the United States.
“The agents push people or mislead them into going illegally,” Anil Pratam, director of the anti-trafficking division of the Gujarat Police, said in a telephone interview.
According to a family friend, the Patelis decided to try and leave for the United States, where they had family. They will fly to Canada, and there they will be met by guides who will help them cross the border.
“Jagdish received a visa. They left to build a new life,” said Amrit Vakil, who during a visit to the village in January congratulated Mr. Patel’s parents on their son’s determination to improve the family’s fortunes.
The Patels arrived in Toronto on January 12th.
Six days later they were among a group of 11 Indians landed at Emerson with instructions to go south until they spotted the lights of a natural gas plant on the other side of the border, the only landmark for several miles. There, by the Red River, a wagon would be waiting for them.
The National Weather Service issued a blizzard warning on January 18. The blizzard is expected to limit visibility to one quarter of a mile or less, and travel is advised “only in an emergency.”
The migrants set out on their journey after dark.
It was a direct shot from the outskirts of a small town about five miles from the border.
Several people in the group wore identical winter coats with fur-trimmed hoods, gloves, balaclavas and rubber boots. But shortly after they left, gusts of 35 mph winds began to throw snow all over the place, and the Patels separated from the group.
Perhaps the couple stopped caring for their children, whose small bodies were more sensitive to the cold. Even if they wanted to turn back, they couldn’t see where they were going, said Dan Riddle, senior meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Grand Forks.
“The family was probably disoriented, lost, and possibly stopped and didn’t know what else to do,” he said.
Instead of moving further south towards the United States, the family wandered east, further from where they left, further from the meeting point.
Van in a ditch
Pembina, a border town, boasts one bar, one school, one grocery store, and four churches that serve sugar beet farmers and resident customs and border officials.
During the summer, the only Red Roost motel welcomes catfish anglers who cast their lines into the Red River. According to Lindy Needham, the owner, it’s mostly a refuge for travelers stranded in harsh weather during the winter.
“People who have never lived in the North and haven’t seen freezing temperatures for weeks really have no idea about it,” she said. “It’s colder in here than the fridge in your kitchen.”
Around sunrise on January 19, a man identified by authorities as Steve Shand, a 47-year-old former Uber driver from Florida, drove a white van with 15 passengers into a snow-covered ditch a few miles from Pembina, on a highway. Minnesota Riverside.
A snow blower who happened to be passing by pulled the car out. He later told Border Patrol that there were two passengers in the van who looked like Indians or Pakistanis and that Mr. Shand told him he was going to visit friends in Winnipeg, about 70 miles north.
The Border Patrol began a search and intercepted the van around 8:30 a.m., arresting Mr. Shand when the agent determined that the two Indians in the back had entered the United States illegally.
The van contained several crates of bottled water, juices, and snacks, as well as receipts from Walmart in Fargo received the day before.
While the driver and passengers were being transported to Pembina station, other agents were sent to comb the area. They encountered five Indians on their way south. A woman in her 20s, apparently suffering from frostbite and hypothermia, leaned on two other people.
“They wanted to be rescued,” said Katherine Seemer, a deputy patrol agent in Pembin, whose team found them.
At the station, one of the migrants reported that the group had been walking for more than 11 hours.
He also said that he spent a large amount of money to enter Canada on a student visa, which he obtained under false pretenses – he did not intend to study in Canada. After moving to the United States, he expected to be met and taken to Chicago.
When the border guards searched the migrants’ belongings, they found the children’s things in the backpack and asked about them. According to the migrants, initially there was a family of four with them. They didn’t know where they were.
The agents called in the US Air Force.
Cross-border search
Around 9:20 a.m., the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Emerson received a call from the US Border Patrol alerting them to the missing family and immediately dispatched a team to nearby fields.
The waist-deep snow made the terrain impassable for a four-wheel drive truck, forcing the search party to return for all-terrain vehicles equipped with snow-capable tracks.
At 13:30 they saw what looked like human footprints in the snow. Not far away, they found what they feared: the three bodies of a man, a woman, and a baby, frozen in the snow in twisted positions, in which they died. A few feet away lay the frozen body of an 11-year-old girl, curled up into a ball.
The kids gave up first, and the parents waited next to them? Did the family just give up and lie down in the windy darkness?
“It’s almost mathematically impossible for four people to die at the same time,” said Mr. Jennings, a Grand Forks detective.
The remaining seven Indian migrants were deported and released with orders with Chicago Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Mr. Shand, a naturalized Jamaican citizen, was released without bail pending trial.
Farewell live
The bodies of the Patel family were taken to the Winnipeg mortuary.
Dilip Patel, a relative from Illinois, set up a GoFundMe campaign that raised over $80,000 for funeral services.
On February 6, about a dozen relatives from the United States and India gathered at the funeral home, and the local Indian priest performed the last rites. The ceremony was broadcast live to the residents of Dingucha village.
The mourners walked past four open coffins adorned with red and white floral arrangements. A toy truck and a soft toy popped out of 3-year-old Dharmik’s tiny box. A stuffed unicorn lay next to his sister Vihangi, whose hair was adorned with a shiny pink bow.
The Patels were cremated later that day.
“It was the saddest funeral for me,” said Bhadresh Bhatt, a former president of the Hindu Society of Manitoba, who attended. “Such a young family. Especially the two little kids, they haven’t seen the world yet.”
Vaibhav Jha reported from Dinguch, India. Kirsten Noyes contributed to the study.