FERGUS FALLS, Minn, May 29, (AP): More than three years after a family of four from India froze to death while trying to enter the US along a remote stretch of the Canadian border in a blizzard, the convicted ringleader of an international human smuggling plot was sentenced in Minnesota on Wednesday to 10 years in prison.

Federal prosecutors had recommended nearly 20 years for Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, and nearly 11 years for the driver who was supposed to pick them up, Steve Anthony Shand, who got 6 1/2 years Wednesday with two years' supervised release. "The crime in many respects is extraordinary because it did result in the unimaginable death of four individuals, including two children,” US District Judge John Tunheim said.

"These were deaths that were clearly avoidable.” Patel's attorney, Thomas Leinenweber, told the court before sentencing that Patel maintains his innocence and argued he was no more than a "low man on the totem pole.” He asked for time served, 18 months. But the acting US attorney for Minnesota, Lisa Kirkpatrick, said Patel exploited the migrants’ hopes for a better life in America, out of his own greed.

"We should make no mistake, it was the defendant’s greed that set in motion the facts that bring us here today,” she said. Patel, in an orange uniform and handcuffed, declined to address the court. He showed no visible emotion as the sentence was issued. The judge noted that he is likely to be deported to his native India after completing his sentence.

He cooperated as marshals handcuffed him and led him from the courtroom. Shand, who had been free pending sentencing, showed no visible reaction to his own sentence, either. The judge ordered him to report to prison July 1 and agreed to recommend that he serve his sentence at the Federal Prison Camp in Pensacola, Florida, where he can be near his family. The judge handed down the sentences at the federal courthouse in the northwestern Minnesota city of Fergus Falls, where the two men were tried and convicted on four counts apiece last November.