Relief and new baby for asylum family of child suffocated in Channel crossing

The Alhashemi family have spent the past 15 years moving around Europe in a state of legal limbo.

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Each arrival, in its own way, marked a sharp swerve in the fortunes of a grief-bludgeoned Iraqi family that has spent the past 15 years darting around Europe in a state of legal limbo. Unable to secure asylum, or to work legally, or to call anywhere home.

The Alhashemi family scraped the depths of misery in April 2024. Threatened with imminent deportation from Belgium to Iraq, they attempted to cross the English Channel in a small boat. Their seven-year-old daughter, Sara, died in a suffocating crush onboard – an incident we witnessed from a French beach.

A little more than a year later, a life-changing email from an official French refugee agency reached the family at their temporary accommodation in Rouvroy. It is a quiet town surrounded by World War One memorials and by the tall coal slag heaps that litter this stretch of northern France. The far-right French politician, Marine Le Pen, is a local MP.

"We know our path now," says Ahmed Alhashemi, 42, scrolling through the email, a small smile breaking across his careworn face.