‘Jumping for joy’: Olympic hopeful on track for permanent residency after facing deportation

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It was late Thursday when Tamarri Lindo, 21, saw an unexpected email pop up in his inbox from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) that changed his and his family’s entire lives: an email that said they were no longer under threat of deportation and could finally call Canada home as permanent residents.

“We read a letter that IRCC said something about being approved. I was like, ‘Wait, I didn’t just read this right? Did I just read this right?’” said Lindo in a Zoom interview with CTV News Friday.

“Then we were all over the place that night.. we’re shouting, we’re jumping up and down. I was very excited. But what’s crazy is that it actually felt like a dream, because... I can’t believe it finally happened.”

The Lindo family and their lawyer, Aidan Simardone, began a social media campaign and petition last week to put public pressure on elected officials to stop the Lindo family from getting deported back to Jamaica.

“The petition got over a thousand signatures that were sent to the members of parliament and different ministers who are responsible for both immigration and deportations,” said Simardone in a Zoom interview with CTV News Friday.“Thanks to all this attention, all this pressure that the Lindos ended up getting -- just yesterday, very recently, their humanitarian, compassionate application was approved -- and that’s for the whole family,” Simardone said. “This grants them permanent residency and means that they can remain in Canada, that they no longer can be actually deported anymore and that they are now safe.”

Lindo has a dream to represent Canada at the Olympics as part of the hurdling team, after becoming one of the country’s top hurdlers at the collegiate level. Now competing while in his third year at York University, he already has a gold medal from the 2025 Ontario University Athletics championship in 60-metre hurdles and gold in the 4x100 metre relay at the Canada Games in August.

But his dream almost came to an end after his entire family was on the verge of being deported back to Jamaica.

In 2019, Lindo’s father, George, brought his wife and Lindo’s two sisters to Canada from Jamaica and filed political asylum after their lawyer says George was targeted for his political affiliation with the country’s opposition party, the People’s National Party. He alleged he had been the victim of several violent attacks, including three assassination attempts.

In May of 2024, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) gave them a notice of deportation, and later that year, gave them a one-year extension to stay.

At the time, the IRCC had said the Lindo family had “provided little documentary evidence to demonstrate that they are at risk of harm or persecution in Jamaica as a result of (Lindo’s) political activity” and “crime, including murder, is widespread throughout Jamaica - any risk they face is not personalized, it’s one shared generally by all persons living in Jamaica.”

The one-year extension was set to end this month, with Simardone saying they had an interview with CBSA this upcoming Monday and that deportation would likely begin quickly after that.

“In this case, what we provided was that we showed that the family is contributing significantly to Canada. I mean, of course, the parents who are hard working and pay their taxes, but also the big story here is Tamarri Lindo, with his major success in track and field. And then also continuing to provide evidence, news reports from Jamaica about political violence,” said Simardone.

In an interview with CTV News last Sunday, the family said it believed returning to Jamaica could possibly mean death, and that it had heard from friends and family back home that people had come to the family’s old house in Jamaica looking to see if they had returned.

Simardone credits that public pressure as part of the reason why the IRCC accepted the Lindo family’s claim and has now granted it “permanent residency in principle,” meaning it meets the eligibility criteria, but must still pass the medical, security and background checks.

“I think it’s no surprise that it was very soon after the attention that this case got that we … got an approval. We were, of course, on this for more than two years. And then suddenly, within the span of a week, everything moves really quickly. So thanks to a good reminder of that: nothing’s ever set in stone when it comes to immigration (and) public attention, public pressure does work," said Simardone.

The IRCC did not provide CTV News with a reason as to why the Lindos’ claim was approved, saying it would need the family’s permission, which their lawyer did not provide, to share that private information.

Meanwhile, Lindo is excited at the prospect of representing the maple leaf on the Olympic stage. Now heading towards citizenship, he hopes he can thank Canadians for supporting him and his family by giving them gold medals in return.

“I’ll try my best from right here now to continue making Canada proud,” said Lindo. “And hopefully one day... when it’s time for me to put on that jersey, I remember all of them and make sure I compete every single day for everybody who helped supporting me and my family.”