Alvin Randhawa followed his elder brother Alexie onto the Vancouver waterfront where both siblings worked for years as longshoremen.

Now Alvin is following Alexie into a U.S. prison after the younger man was sentenced in Buffalo, New York, Wednesday to just over seven years in jail.

Alvin Randhawa pleaded guilty last August to conspiracy to export cocaine from the U.S. into Canada. Other charges against him were dropped.

His plea agreement at the time said he faced a minimum U.S. jail term of 10 years.

But U.S. District Court Judge William M. Skretny agreed Wednesday to an 87-month sentence, followed by another three years of supervised release for Randhawa.

Skretny sealed several documents related to the sentencing hearing.

The seven-year term is two years longer than the 60-month sentence handed to Alexie in 2008 after he was caught in California with 107 kilograms of cocaine linked to another cross-border smuggling operation.

Alexie served four years before returning to Canada and his job as a Vancouver dockworker.

Alvin, now 36, admitted last year that from July 2010 until May 2011, he conspired with others to possess and distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine in the United States.

A large shipment of cocaine was seized from his Canadian group on Sept. 8, 2010, his plea agreement documents said, after which he and two others “began planning future smuggling runs from the United States to Canada.”

“These plans, which included retrofitting a false compartment into a tractor-trailer for the purpose of smuggling cocaine, resulted in a smuggling run in May 2011,” said the documents. “Randhawa recruited an individual from Vancouver, British Columbia, to complete the false compartment.”

The person who made the compartment is not named in the U.S. court documents and has since died.

U.S. authorities later intercepted the tractor-trailer with 26 kilograms of cocaine hidden inside to be distributed to “customers” of Alvin Randhawa and his associates.

Investigators believe the organization used several bridges, including ones in the Buffalo-Niagara area, to smuggle about 2,000 kilograms of cocaine. One conspirator had a warehouse rented in California where the cocaine was placed inside the made-in-Vancouver compartment.

The Randhawa brothers have a third sibling, Arun, who is also a longshoreman.

He lost a Federal Court battle in June over a government decision to deny him security clearance on the docks because of his siblings’ crimes.

Arun Randhawa had argued that it was unfair to deny him the special security pass simply because of his brothers’ crimes.

He said he has had minimal contact with Alvin and Alexie over the years and that he is a law-abiding citizen with no criminal record.

But Federal Court Judge René Leblanc said that his brothers’ “serious criminal activities” were relevant “to the security of marine transportation.”

“Because of his association to his brothers, there were reasonable grounds to suspect that there is a risk … that he be suborned to commit an act or to assist or abet any person to commit an act that might constitute a risk to marine transportation.”

Transport Canada filed a police report in its case against Arun which said that his brothers were members of “an organized crime group involved in cross border narcotics smuggling” that had links with “the Hells Angels, the Japanese mafia, and Chinese criminals.”

Leblanc ruled that the government had “a rational basis for holding a reasonable suspicion of subornation and potential risk to marine transport security.”

Arun Randhawa can continue to work on the docks, but will not be able to access restricted areas or perform certain tasks without the security clearance.

kbolan@postmedia.com

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