Suspected border smuggler was Florida taxi driver with financial problems | The Canadian News

A Florida man arrested after the freezing death of four Indian nationals near the Canadian-US border is a taxi driver with a difficult financial past, according to court applications.

Steve Shand is a former waiter who ran his own taxi business and declared bankruptcy four years ago. He was arrested this week for allegedly transporting illegal migrants.

U.S. authorities suspect he may be part of a larger network that smuggled Indian citizens from Manitoba on foot to Minnesota in freezing winter temperatures.

An expert said human smuggling rings working on the southern U.S. border will hire drivers to pick up migrants once they have crossed over and delivered them to safe homes.

“Using the same strategy at the northern border would therefore make sense,” said Keith Cozine, an assistant professor of homeland security at the St. John’s University in New York, said.

Shand is being held in custody and would appear in court on Monday for a detention hearing. None of the allegations against him were proven in court.

The 47-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen worked as a server at an Olive Garden franchise in Gurnee, Ill., Between 2008 and 2012, after arriving in the U.S. from his native Jamaica, according to U.S. court applications.

He later moved to Deltona, Fla., And introduced Shand’s Taxi in 2017. But less than a year later, he applied for bankruptcy protection, claiming he owed more than US $ 100,000, court records show.

In the bankruptcy proceedings, he described himself as an “Uber driver” who collects most of his income from social security and supports a five-year-old daughter and two teenage boys.

When Amazon opened a distribution facility in Deltona, a 2019 post on Shand’s Facebook page indicated that it was starting a new job at the online retail store. He is no longer employed there.

On January 10, 2022, Shand drove a passenger car of the Alamo Rent-a-Car at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, according to the affidavit of an investigator from the Department of Homeland Security.

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A receipt found by investigators showed him a room on Jan. 11 at the La Quinta Hotel in Grand Forks, ND, 4-1 / 2 hours northwest of the airport, and just over an hour south of the Manitoba border, rented.

The next day, U.S. border agents found boot prints left in the snow by “three individuals who crossed the U.S.-Canadian border,” special agent John Stanley wrote in his affidavit.

Shand’s rental car was returned on January 13. A lease agreement indicates that on January 17, he rented another passenger car at Minneapolis Airport, this time from Enterprise, the affidavit reads.

The driver of a snow removal truck was on the road early on January 19 when he came across the minibus, stuck in the snow near the Canadian border. He helped get it back on track.

“He said Shand told him he was on his way to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada to visit friends. “The driver noticed two passengers in the van who he believed were of Indian or Pakistani descent,” reads the affidavit.

Warned by the truck driver, the U.S. Border Patrol pulled over the van. Inside, they found cases of bottled water, as well as juice bottles and snacks purchased on January 18 in Fargo, ND, reads the affidavit.

Shand was arrested for allegedly smuggling foreign nationals. The two passengers were also arrested as they were undocumented, the affidavit reads. They were on their way to the Pembina border patrol station when they came across five more Indian civilians who had allegedly just crossed the border on foot.

One of them, who was only identified as VD, said they were dropped off on the Canadian side and walked for 11-1 / 2 hours. Someone in a van was supposed to pick them up as soon as they crossed the border.

He also told border guards he was carrying the backpack of a family of four who had crossed over with them but they had separated. The package contained children’s clothes, nappies, toys and medication.

Later that day, RCMP officials found four frozen bodies on the Canadian side of the border. The victims have been tentatively identified as the family that has separated from VD’s group.

Two other Indian citizens were admitted to hospital with freezing, including a woman who “is likely to require a partial amputation of one hand due to exposure to extreme cold weather conditions.”

“The investigation into the deaths of the four individuals in Canada continues along with an investigation into a major human trafficking operation of which Shand is presumably part,” the affidavit read.

Many of the border crossings wore identical winter outfits, including boots with prints similar to those found after earlier crossings.

One of the Indian citizens told border agents he had paid a “substantial amount of money” to enter Canada on a “fraudulently obtained student visa”.

After crossing the border on foot, he would be picked up and driven to his uncle’s home in Chicago, the affidavit read.

Shand looks like an unlikely human smuggler king, says Kelly Sundberg, a former Canada Border Service officer who now teaches at Mount Royal University in Calgary.

“I think they got low-hanging fruit here,” he said.

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