pushing for the expansion of the detention infrastructure. The responsibility for detention facilities was divided between the region (health care), the prefecture (buildings, furnishings, hygienic products, etc.) and the police (custodial duties). This splitting of responsibilities created a number of coordination issues, leaving, as a result, most detention centres without any medical staff or the appropriate furniture (CPT, 2006). Given the ‘delayed and elliptic attempt to move towards a modern immigration policy framework’ (Sitaropoulos, 2002b, p. 2), as early as four years later, in 2005 a new immigration law, 3386/2005 ‘Codification of legislation on the entry, residence and social integration of third-country nationals on Greek territory’ was passed; again, this should not be mistaken as an attempt to overhaul the government of migration but rather responded only to legal requirements needed to incorporate the relevant European law into national law, changing very little for immigrants’ daily struggles. Law 3386/2005, amended in 2009, increased the maximum detention period to six months with the possibility to detain someone for twelve months in cases of non-compliance to the deportation procedure. Lacking or not showing valid documents, detainees became effectively undeportable. This could also be due to administrative mistakes and for practical and economic reasons. Authorities may be unable to identify the person to be removed or migrants may be lacking proof of identification. A Frontex officer I interviewed in 2011 told me that ‘giving false evidence is a plague’ with which Greek authorities struggle, as foreign diplomatic missions may not collaborate to identify their nationals. Article 81 of Law 3386 foresees the development of special facilities for aliens (Ειδικός Χώρος Παραμονής Αλλοδαπών, ΕΧΠΑ, in Greek) and that all decision making with regard to detention centres, including the terms of operation, would be taken at the national level, i.e., the central government. Until the end of 2010, however, there would be no minimum operating standards for running any of the detention facilities. As a consequence, the police remained in charge, alone. Most troublingly, evidence from the time, suggests that in practice the period for which individuals were detained varied greatly and was determined by the respective police authority concerned, influenced by a hierarchy of deservingness, that, in turn, reflected the national and political situation in the migrants’ countries of origin (Borrelli and Lindberg, 2018). For example, in 2007 on the island of Samos, the police were detaining all irregular 77