I. Summary The police arrested me in Thessaloniki and put me in jail for 25 days. The guards did not speak to me. If I tried to speak to them, they just shook their heads. I had no asylum interview when I was arrested, detained, or released. I told them I was an Iraqi. I gave them my real name. They only asked me if I wanted to stay in detention or leave. They told me that if I asked for asylum and a red card that I would need to spend more time in jail beyond 25 days, but if I didn’t want asylum and a red card I could leave detention after 25 days. So, I refused the red card and after 25 days they released me. I got a white paper telling me I needed to leave the country in 30 days. I wanted to go to another country to seek asylum, but a friend told me that because they took my fingerprints, they would send me back to Athens. I have now been here a month without papers. Now I am in a hole. I can’t go out. I can’t stay. Every day I think I made a mistake to leave my country. I want to go back, but how can I? I would be killed if I go back. But they treat you like a dog here. I have nothing. No rights. No friends. —An Iraqi Kurd from Kirkuk, who made five attempts to cross from Turkey to Greece, was beaten and summarily expelled from Greece to Turkey and beaten and detained in Turkey before going back to Greece. Iraqis are currently the largest nationality group of asylum seekers lodging new claims in the European Union (EU), and Greece has become their favored entry point. But Greece does not want this role, nor do Iraqis appear to want to stay in Greece, but would prefer to seek asylum in countries to the west and north. However, Iraqi asylum seekers find themselves stuck in Greece. First, they can’t move onward because EU asylum law, via the Dublin II regulation, normally requires asylum seekers to lodge their claims for protection in the first EU country in which they set foot and they also can’t move back home because of fear of war and persecution. They are almost never provided asylum in Greece. Most Iraqi refugees attempt to enter the EU via the Greek islands off the coast of Turkey or by crossing the Evros River that marks Greece’s land border with Turkey. Despite Stuck in a Revolving Door 2