In the June 2012 national elections, the conservative party, New Democracy, came into power. Fascist Golden Dawn secured 19 seats in the Parliament, for a first time in its history, bringing openly racist and neo-fascistic rhetoric into the public domain of parliamentary politics. Following the steps of its predecessor, shortly after taking power, the new government launched the largest, in terms of both geographic coverage and intensity, sweep operation, Xenios Zeus. In a perverse reference to the ancient Greek God Zeus, symbol of hospitality to and patronage of foreigners, the operation aimed to arrest and detain all irregular migrants in Greek territory, mobilizing around 2,000 police officers for this purpose (Human Rights Watch, 2013). Sweep operations evolved from sporadic, non-orchestrated attempts into an official policy that was institutionalised at a national level, as neighbourhoods were racially cleansed. Dimitra-Dora Teloni and Regina Mantanika (2015, p. 193) summarise it succinctly ‘in all these operations what is at stake is the non-tolerance of the visibility of a certain population in public spaces.’ Indeed, notwithstanding claims from the Minister of Public Order that they did not ‘care about the color, ethnicity, religion of the illegals’ when conducting identity checks (Ministry of Citizen Protection, 2012a), police statistics suggest otherwise. Between August 2012 and February 2013 almost 85,000 people of foreign origin had been brought to police stations for verification of their legal status in Greece and 4,811 had been arrested for illegal entry and stay and detained pending deportation. The fact that only 6 per cent of stops led to the identification of undocumented migrants, raised concerns about the police’s use of ethnic profiling in determining whom to stop (Human Rights Watch, 2013). Making migrant lives unlivable The practices described above, massive operations aimed to control, deter and arrest all irregular arrivals led directly to the enlargement of the detention population; a connection acknowledged by officials who, in addition to enhanced checks, made frequent announcements about pending reforms aimed at further increasing the detention estate, manage asylum cases more quickly and expand voluntary return programmes. In 2014, then Minister of Citizen Protection, Mr Chrisochoidis, announced, the state would build 30 new detention centres in 10 Greek prefectures (Naftemporiki, 2012d). 102