20 Lena Karamanidou and Bernd Kasparek The intensification of migratory movements in the late 2000s, helped by the demining of the border, led to the launch of the first ever Frontex Rapid Border Intervention in October 2010, signalling the attempt to deepen the Europeanization of the local border regime. Frontex has had a permanent presence in the area since then, and the increased cooperation between Greek and EU actors was facilitated by the creation of two regional border management coordination centres (Fotiadis 2015; Ministry for Public Order and Citizen Protection [MPOCP] 2014). While the Hellenic Police is the state authority responsible for migration control, the military plays a significant role in border surveillance and migration control (Levidis 2020; Pallister-Wilkins 2016). Local farmers and fishers, bus drivers and conductors and hotel staff, all play a part in informing the police of the presence of people on the move (Karamanidou and Kasparek 2018; Lafazani 2006) Since March 2020, the border has been further reinforced with a new wall in the south of the prefecture, while surveillance infrastructures have been expanded, with more border guards hired and armoured vehicles, sound cannons, drones and a Frontex zeppelin aircraft deployed (Gatopoulos and Kantouris 2021). Thus, Europeanized and local modes of control co-exist in border assemblages. These expanding border assemblages have rendered the Evros borderland particularly violent and deadly. Between 2000 and 2008, at least 49 people crossing the border were killed by landmines, a legacy of the border crisis of 1974 triggered by the Turkish invasion of Cyprus (Levidis 2020; Pavlidis and Karakasi 2019). While landmine deaths declined after demining was completed in 2009 (Topak 2014; Ulusoy et al. 2019), the death toll remained high, making Evros the deadliest land border in Europe (Fundamental Rights Agency [FRA] 2020). At least 398 people were found dead between 2000 and early 2019, the main causes of death being drowning and hypothermia, and more recently car and train accidents as people try to move inland (FRA 2020; Pavlidis and Karakasi 2019). The construction of the fence in North Evros and the expansion of surveillance technologies pushed border crossers into the more dangerous route of crossing the river (Topak 2014; Ulusoy et al. 2019). We observed a similar dynamic during fieldwork: while people used buses and trains to move from Orestiada to Alexandroupoli and Thessaloniki in 2018 and early 2019, the risk of ID checks and arrest appeared to push them towards using the mountainous routes of inner Evros, thus increasing the risk of death by exposure, or following the railway lines, which resulted in several deaths in train accidents. Police violence against border crossers is extensively documented, as are incidents of violence by civilians and paramilitaries (BVMN 2020; Human Rights360 2020b; Scavo 2020). Arbitrary detention and degrading detention conditions have been documented continuously since the late 1990s, as were practices of preventing access to asylum, legal assistance, interpretation and healthcare (ARSIS et al. 2018; State Crime 11.1 2022