Toronto man’s deportation deferred after UN requests interim measure
The following article is from Toronto Today
September 23, 2026
By Cherise Seucharan
An ex-refugee who has lived in Toronto for nearly 30 years has had his deportation deferred, due to an interim measure granted by the United Nations.
On Wednesday, the UN Human Rights Committee confirmed it was considering a petition filed on behalf of 58-year-old Roman Slepcsik, and requested that Canada hold off on deportation until the agency could decide on the matter.
Canada Border Services Agency has deferred his removal until the UN communication is resolved, according to Slepcsik’s lawyers. The urgent request to the UN to intervene was filed last week by Roxana Parsa, a staff lawyer with TMU’s Lincoln Alexander School of Law legal clinic.
The UN decision came just in time, as Slepcsik had been scheduled to be deported on Friday, Sept. 25.
Toronto’s east end community has rallied around Slepcsik, who has lived in Toronto for nearly 30 years. A petition to stop his removal has garnered over 1000 signatures.
Slepcsik came to Canada in 1997, fleeing the Czech Republic, said Jennifer Wan, a lawyer with Don Valley Community Legal Services. She said violence toward the Roma community had been escalating and Slepcsik’s family was targeted by neo-Nazi skinheads.
Slepcsik was granted refugee status in 1998 and then permanent residency one year later. He made a living as a carpenter and raised his two daughters, who joined him in Canada in 2000.
However, in 2023, after making multiple trips back to the Czech Republic to care for ailing loved ones or to attend funerals, Slepcsik was stripped of his permanent residency status.
His trips back home were considered grounds for cessation — such as when a refugee is considered to be re-availing themselves of the protection of their home country — and an amendment passed in 2012 automatically strips permanent resident status from protected persons with a cessation order.
Wan told TorontoToday that Slepcsik didn’t know about cessation or that the rules had changed.
“He thought permanent residence status was permanent — because it’s called permanent residence, right?” she said. “It’s very little known by refugees themselves that they face such drastic consequences.”
Slepcsik’s lawyers were unsuccessful in a judicial review of his cessation case in Federal Court in 2025. While the court is set to hear an appeal sometime next year, a request to stop Slepcsik’s deportation was denied in August.
Wan said that the lack of communication with former refugees and the entire process of having status stripped has felt like Canada is “waiting to catch them in the act.”
She added that Slepcsik has been a peaceful, law-abiding and hard working member of the Toronto community, and that it was “nonsensical” for Canada to pursue deportation in his case — much like for other longtime residents in Canada at risk of losing their status.
“I feel that Canada has an obligation to make an alternative, easy path to recovering status for long-settled residents,” she said.
CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated to clarify Slepcsik’s legal case in Federal Court and the reasons why Slepcsik returned to his home country.