A dream deferred?

Montreal, Canada – As he took his place at the starting line, sprinter Tamarri Lindo felt his knees begin to wobble.

In seconds, a pistol would fire, signalling to the eight competitors that the race was on — that it was time to jolt forward and dash across the 110-metre track.

Lindo could feel the rubber-coated turf beneath his feet, pushing against the thin fabric of his cleats as he approached the starting block at lane six.

Before him stood 10 hurdles: metal frames spaced evenly across the track. If he could leap over each one — and do it quickly — he stood a chance of joining Canada’s Olympic track and field team. If not, his Olympic dreams would be over for the year.

But there was a bigger obstacle weighing on Lindo’s mind.

Just one day prior, an officer from the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) had telephoned with instructions for Lindo to report for his final deportation proceedings. He had less than two weeks to pack up and leave the country.

Lindo bent down and kicked his right leg into the starting block. The race would not only be his best shot to join the Olympic squad — but also his best chance at drumming up public support for his appeal.

Lindo and his family came to Canada in April 2019, on the heels of what they describe as yet another assassination attempt against his father, George Lindo.

The family was originally from Jamaica, a Caribbean island long roiled by political conflict.

For decades, two parties had been fighting for dominance on the island: the right-leaning Jamaican Labour Party and its left-wing rival, the People’s National Party.

George, a political activist, was a volunteer for the latter — and that, Lindo explained, put him in the crosshairs.

In 2012, George claims an assailant slashed his neck. In 2016, he said he narrowly avoided gunfire at a bar. And in 2019, two armed gunmen appeared to be stalking him.

“I've experienced a life that I never want my siblings to experience,” said Lindo. Now 20, he was only 15 years old when he, his parents and his younger siblings fled the country.

They arrived in Toronto, the bustling capital of Ontario. But confronted with the complexities of a foreign immigration system, the family was unsure whether to hire a lawyer. They ultimately completed their asylum application without access to legal counsel.

In 2020, their application was denied. In a statement released to the media outlet CTV, the Canadian government’s immigration department cited a lack of “documentary evidence to demonstrate that they are at risk of harm or persecution in Jamaica”.

The Lindo family has been living under the threat of deportation ever since. Without a successful asylum claim, they became classified as undocumented under Canadian law.

Still, Lindo and his family started to put down roots in Canada. Lindo’s youngest sister Tameliah was born in the country. Lindo himself completed high school and earned a scholarship as a student athlete, known for his ability to dart across the track.

Lindo had been competing in the 110-metre hurdles for as long as he can remember. But it was only when he was 18 that he realised he could surpass other runners with more experience.

Lindo was eventually taken under the wing of Charles Allen, a coach who had competed in the 2004 Athens Olympics.

They would often notice each other at the Toronto Track and Field Center, and Lindo approached the former Olympian — and coach with Canada’s national team — about how to improve his technique.

“He used to see that I was training on my own,” said Lindo. “He saw my potential and [said], the day I'm serious about it, I know where to find him.”

Under Allen’s tutelage, Lindo began training with Canada’s national track and field team, with the aim of qualifying for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

Lindo dreamed of becoming the first Canadian to score a medal in the 110-metre hurdles since Mark McKoy won gold at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

“I actually met him,” Lindo explained. He remembers the Olympian told him that he has “the potential to break the national record”.

But whenever his teammates travelled abroad for international tournaments, Lindo had to remain in Canada. If he left, he feared his undocumented status would bar him from re-entering the country.

It was a significant setback. Lindo explained that those foreign competitions could have helped him reach the threshold to earn a guaranteed spot on Canada’s Olympic team.

Nevertheless, his performances at Canadian track meets were strong enough to nab him a slot at the Olympic trials in Montreal, scheduled for the end of June.

“It was the first time I felt ready for a championship,” said Lindo.

But the lead-up to the Olympic trials would prove to be a tumultuous time for Lindo. Over the years, he and his family had applied for every single legal avenue available for them to remain in Canada — but again and again, they were refused.

During the first half of 2024, Lindo and his family faced two successive deportation scares. The most recent came after their application to remain in Canada on “humanitarian and compassionate grounds” was denied.

The stress made Lindo lose a considerable amount of weight, and he credits the anxiety with hampering his ability to focus on hurdling.

“Being an athlete is hard enough,” said Lindo. “Having to also go through all of this? There's a lot on my plate.”

But immigration advocates say Lindo is not alone. While the Canadian government acknowledges there are “no accurate figures” for the number of undocumented people in Canada, it estimates the population could range anywhere from 20,000 to 500,000.

In Canada, experts say the majority of undocumented immigrants do not arrive through irregular border crossings. Rather, most enter the country through legal channels, like refugee claims or visa applications.

Like Lindo, many of them lose their legal status to stay in the country, sometimes through circumstances outside their control.

Their visas could expire, or their application could be rejected, leaving them with a precarious choice: to return home or stay in Canada without the proper paperwork.

Syed Hussan, the executive director of Canada’s Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC), said 2023 saw the highest number of deportations in a decade. He estimates that 40 happen each day.

His group has been advocating on Lindo’s behalf, in the hopes of preventing his deportation.

Since December 2021, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised to implement a regularisation programme that would allow undocumented people to gain legal residency.

But Hassan points out that such a pathway has yet to materialise. Trudeau himself has admitted there is no official timeline yet for its creation and implementation.

Had a regularisation programme been in place, Hussan believes “the Lindo family would not have gone through the crisis that they have”.

According to Vincent Wong, an assistant law professor at the University of Windsor, the failure to create a regularisation programme can be attributed to fears of nationalistic backlash and the perceived socioeconomic benefits of maintaining the status quo.

“Undocumented communities [in Canada], although very large as a percentage of the Canadian population, are much more administratively and politically invisibilised than in the United States,” said Wong.

Lindo said the uncertainty surrounding his immigration status chipped away at his confidence in the final weeks leading up to June’s Olympic trials in Montreal.

“It did hurt me,” he explained. He felt as if all his hard work amounted to nothing in the eyes of the Canadian government: “No matter how good I train to be, no matter how hard I work, we don't recognise it.”

Lindo was set to compete on June 29. But the final days before his race were fraught. On June 28, he received a call from a private number.

The caller identified themselves as an officer with the Canada Border Services Agency. He announced that Lindo’s deportation date had been set for July 10 — less than three weeks before the Paris Olympic Games.

That evening, the National Hurricane Center in the United States also announced it was tracking a tropical depression that was expected to develop into a hurricane. It was headed straight for Jamaica.

Lindo’s recollection of that day remains hazy. He said he arrived for morning practice in a daze and struggled to stay focused. Rather than soaring over the hurdles, he knocked several down.

“I'm going against the hurdles, and I'm hitting them pretty bad, the worst way I hit them all year,” said Lindo.

The news of his impending deportation had shaken his resolve. As soon as he left practice and returned to his hotel room, Lindo said he broke down.

The only solace he could find was the hope that if he performed well at the Olympic qualifiers, maybe it could force the Canadian immigration agency to reconsider its decision. He cried himself to sleep.

The next day, at the Olympic trials, Lindo tried to corral his thoughts — but his knees were beginning to quake. Any moment now, the starting pistol would fire.

Suddenly, a referee called a delay from across the track. It gave Lindo five extra seconds — five seconds to pull himself together. He fell to his knees, made the sign of the cross on his chest and asked God to be with him.

Then, with a pop of the gun, he was off.

The race was the exact thing that Aidan Simardone needed.

As an immigration lawyer for the Lindo family since March, Simardone had been searching for a way to generate the kind of immense public pressure that would force Canada’s minister of immigration to intervene.

Simardone, who represents the family pro bono, felt the only recourse to prevent Lindo’s deportation was to appeal for a temporary resident permit (TRP). Even people otherwise deemed “inadmissible” to Canada can be eligible to receive such a permit.

Simardone had contacted Nicole Noworyta, a social media strategist, to help organise a public outreach campaign. Together, they prepared social media content and petitions, bringing together a community of local activists.

“Me and Aidan were leading the effort, but we had around 200 people mobilised,” said Noworyta.

The only thing they needed was a spectacle big enough to draw the public eye. And Lindo’s race would be just the ticket.

At the Olympic trials, he cleared the first two hurdles with ease. However, on the third hurdle, his right leg — his dominant leg — grazed the crossbar, slowing him down. He drifted to the back of the heat.

But in a sport where the final results come down to split seconds, Lindo knew better than to give up.

With each subsequent hurdle he cleared, Lindo gained ground, and in the final stretch, he closed the gap, clinching third place by one-fiftieth of a second.

For the first time, Lindo stood on a national podium as a champion, waving the flag of his home province with pride.

After the race, news of the Olympic prospect facing imminent deportation spread rapidly on social media. Petitions to defer Lindo’s deportation were receiving thousands of signatures daily.

At first, Simardone said it looked like the immigration officials would refuse to budge.

But then he got good news: Canada’s immigration agency had issued Lindo’s family a one-year temporary resident permit. Simardone admits he “burst into tears”.

Lindo and his family are currently waiting for a judicial review of their application to stay in Canada on “humanitarian and compassionate grounds”. But the temporary permit gave the family something they didn’t have before: time.

On a recent July afternoon, Lindo returned to the track at the Toronto Track and Field Centre to lace up his sneakers and practise some warm-ups.

But first, he peeled off his socks. “All the best sprinters compete sock-less,” Lindo explained. “I don't want anything coming between me and the spikes.”

He did, however, keep his black baseball cap on. Because of his tight schedule lately, Lindo admits it has been a while since his last haircut.

Lindo’s Olympic dream may have been deferred this year — he ultimately did not qualify — but he has not given up on his goal of winning a medal.

Just last weekend, on July 20, he placed first in the 110-metre hurdle event at a tournament called the Ontario U20, Open and Para Athletics Championships.

“There's a lot of people out here like me,” Lindo said, reflecting on his close scrape with deportation.

But he credits the stories of Canada’s undocumented community with strengthening his Olympic ambitions. For everyone who helped to bring attention to his family’s plight, Lindo pledges to, one day, become their Olympian.