system of border reception has largely remained inadequate and ever-bound by the aspirations set forth in the Statement (i.e. obstructing journeys and externalizing international responsibilities), adversely affecting the lives of third-country nationals and stateless persons seeking protection in Europe. At times, asylum seekers are denied access to the very mechanisms charged with ensuring their first steps towards protection (i.e. reception procedures), through clear-cut arbitrary and illegal means aimed at their “off-the-grid” deportation (push-backs). At others, this denial takes the form of significant delays, highly pertinent on individual characteristics (e.g. nationality) and manifesting in the form of an initial, yet once more highly arbitrary, detention. Indeed, detention has been routinely used at the Evros land border as a means of “crowd control,” with Pre-Removal Centers –that is closed, detention facilities in theory reserved for the expulsion of “illegal aliens”– having transformed into waiting zones where the desperate patiently –albeit, perhaps, fruitlessly– await for their salvation (pre-RIC detention). Yet even upon their reception and incorporation into the mechanics of protection (reception and asylum), asylum seekers are once more faced with denial. A denial, amounting to the only constant is their lives being their ongoing exclusion from the right to be free and equal human beings. Forced to remain at the fringes of society (detention and restriction of liberty), in living conditions that strip them of their dignity and at times very humanity, they await in limbo for their acceptance in a continent that has largely been treating their lives as numbers. All the while, they lack both effective knowledge of the reasons for their exposure to such diverse and punitive-like measures, as well as access to crucial, for their wellbeing services, such as healthcare or education. As a result, many find themselves in an increasingly deteriorating state of mind, with some choosing to further risk their lives by once more placing their trust in smugglers. Indeed, as this situation has increasingly become an established reality of the Greek/European system of reception of asylum seekers at the (Greek) borders, what began as a so-called “Refugee Crisis” is perhaps becoming more of a phenomenon; a phenomenon whereby persons fleeing persecution and/or destitution are “welcomed” in conditions that only serve to further devastate their already traumatized lives. 11 1 European Council, EU-Turkey statement, 18 March 2016 [media release], 18 March 2016, <http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2016/03/18/eu-turkey-statement/>, last accessed 15 March 2018. 2 Hellenic Republic, Law No. 4375 of 2016 on the organization and operation of the Asylum Service, the Appeals Authority, the Reception and Identification Service, the establishment of the General Secretariat for Reception, the transposition into Greek legislation of the provisions of Directive 2013/32/EC [Greece], 3 April 2016, <http://www.refworld.org/docid/573ad4cb4.html>, last accessed 15 March 2018. 3 Greek Council for Refugees, ‘Country Report: Greece’, asylum information database (aida) [website], March 2018 update, pp.66-72, <http://www.asylumineurope.org/reports/country/greece>, last accessed 30 March 2018. 6