It Was 35-Below, and They Weren't Used to the Cold

BBC looks into the deaths of family from India who died trying to walk into US from Canada
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 13, 2022 4:10 PM CST
It Was 35-Below, and They Weren't Used to the Cold
A border marker between the United States and Canada is shown just outside of Emerson, Manitoba.   (John Woods/The Canadian Press via AP)

They were a young family of four from India who froze to death while trying to walk from Canada into the US last month. The BBC digs into the story of the Patel family to try to understand how this came to pass, and one inescapable fact emerges: It was about 35-below zero the night they tried to walk from tiny Emerson, Manitoba, into the US, and the Patels were unfamiliar with temperatures that brutal. "Even on its coldest day, the Patels' home village in western India would not have reached within 10 degrees of freezing," write Holly Honderich and Roxy Gagdekar. The bodies of Vaishaliben, 37; wife Jagdish, 39; daughter, Vihangi, 11; and son, Dharmik, 3, were found together about 40 feet from the US border. All were wearing newly purchased winter clothes, but they didn't stand a chance that night, when they were more than 7,000 miles from home.

This much is known: The Patels, who were in what might be considered the lower middle class in Gujarat, India, flew from India to Toronto around Jan. 12. They arrived in rural Manitoba about 1,200 miles away on Jan. 18, though how is unclear. Authorities believe they were using an informal network of human smugglers, of the same variety used by others in rural India—the story explores "an intense and pervasive social pressure to move abroad, with social status determined by connections in foreign countries." It's not clear where the Patels hoped to end up in the US, and the story notes they were unusual in one sense: In recent years, more people found in such situations have been trying to cross into Canada from the US, rather than vice versa. (Read the full story, which notes the arrest of a Florida man suspected of playing a role in the Patels' journey.)

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