Chapter 3: Building the modern Greek detention estate (20102017) ‘We have to make their lives unlivable’ (Head of Greek Police, 2012) Introduction ‘The [land] border with Turkey is a big and long country road separated by a strip of grass. Basically, this strip is the border. So, when we were there 32 people tried to come in from Turkey. The Greek police stopped them and wouldn’t take them in. They asked Turkey to take them back. Turkey didn’t accept this because they were claiming they were coming from Greece trying to illegally enter Turkey. To cut a long story short these people ended up staying on the grass strip for 6 hours until the Greek and Turkish police decided what to do. Do you know what happened? 16 people went back to Turkey and 16 people entered Greece. This issue is massive. That’s why I’m saying that the fence would be a good idea.’ (Interview with an immigration lawyer, Athens, 2012) The permeability of the Greek-Turkish land border was and remains evident to all actors in the field. As Jozef Balli, Head of Land Operations at Frontex, explained ‘the land border is attractive because it is cheaper and you are immediately on the mainland’ (Pallister-Wilkins, 2015, p. 57). However, seemingly porous borders attract robust government responses (Bosworth and Guild, 2008). To that effect, in 2010 the newly appointed Minister of Citizen Protection, Michalis Chrisohoidis, following a meeting with UNHCR Commissioner, Antonio Gutierrez, announced that Greece had closed all points of entry and exit for those who move ‘illegally’ in order to ‘send a clear message to all directions that Greece is not a fenceless yard, which anyone can enter without permission, nor can it serve as a bridge for whoever wishes to travel illegally to Europe’ (Proto Thema, 2010). Evidently, the response to mass migration was imagined to be threefold; attempting to deter prospective arrivals, pleasing the EU and appeasing public opinion. Required on the one hand to secure its border with Turkey on behalf of all of Europe and Greek citizens and hence effectively deliver a secure external border and a safe country, Greece was asked to do so under conditions of financial privation and surging xenophobia. Castigated, on the other hand, for contravening the human rights standards expected of EU members, Greece seemed unable to do otherwise than fail. And it did. 93