Asylum Procedures The experience of bordering in Greece may generally be described as a period of prolonged waiting, particularly in relation to asylum procedures. On Samos, waiting for the asylum procedures exacerbates and is exacerbated by detention in the CCAC. The dates of substantive asylum interviews vary drastically and there is little transparency on the timeline. IHR reported that this created tension within the CCAC as people did not ‘understand why one person is interviewed on their second week while another has to wait for months’ (32). The wait for an asylum interview may be prolonged, but also expedited at extremely short notice. This is particularly problematic when compounded with the ‘restriction’ to the camp. People who have their asylum interview before they can leave the CCAC are effectively deprived of the right to legal advice or counselling (33). This year, two major instances contributed to the prolonged delay of asylum procedures: the launch of the Alkyoni system and suspension of interpretation services. Earlier this year, the GAS platform, Alykoni, underwent an upgrade that meant that across Greece, including on Samos, people were unable to register a first instance asylum application between 05 May and 21 August 2023 (29). Asylum interviews were also postponed as GAS caseworkers could not access the files of applicants. The upgrade was originally proposed in early 2022 for a January 2023 launch (34). However, the suspension was announced abruptly and without further information on the expected resumption of services. Asylum interviews requiring interpretation on Samos were indefinitely postponed in March 2023 after the contract between the Ministry of Migration and European Asylum Agency for interpretation services failed to be renewed (35). For two months, the CCAC had extremely limited access to interpretation. In fact, Efsyn, a Greek newspaper, described interpreters in the CCACs as an ‘endangered species’ (35). IHR reported that people were expressing a willingness to forgo their right to an interpreter to avoid prolonging their stay, exemplifying how waiting for asylum interviews and the ‘prison-like’ structure of the CCAC have a corollary impact (32). Comparatively, those who did not require interpretation were faced with the opposite problem, wherein they may be called at extremely short notice for a substantive asylum interview. Often people who had their original interview date set in, for example, two weeks’ time, were called at noon to the reception desk for a new interview date the following morning at 8am (32). Access to interpretation was not exclusively impactful on the asylum interviews, but also inhibited communication with all of the authorities present in the CCAC. For example, people without ID cards struggled to request permission to leave the CCAC to see a doctor or lawyer. The lack of interpretation therefore had a profound impact as both a physical barrier to leaving, as well as exacerbating the degree and intensity of detention. This issue with interpretation is replicated at a smaller scale on a general basis in the CCAC, where access to interpreters will affect the wait-times of asylum interviews and where interpreters are often not available to facilitate communication between people held in the CCAC and authorities. The failure to implement the Alkyoni system and to secure the interpretation contract on Samos prolonged waiting for some in the CCAC. This prolonged waiting contributes to detention as it interferes with people’s sense of time, contributing to a sense of limbo or lack of control over the asylum 12