Chapter 4. Guarding and Monitoring Immigration Detention ‘We can’t be very displeasing. We have a gentlemen’s agreement with the police’, Member of the Greek National Preventive Mechanism (Fieldnotes, Athens, 2018) Introduction Working inside a detention centre, where listlessness is patent makes you attuned to the slightest alteration as this may be a cause for alarm for those detained inside (see Bosworth et al., 2016). However, that summer day of 2012 at the airport detention facility everything was different. The walls were painted a bright white colour and there were fresh wet paint signs all over the place. The whole building had been meticulously cleaned and exhumed a strong sense of chlorine. The old man who was responsible for cleaning the police station building and detention facility was moving busily around mopping the floors. The police officers on duty were anxiously observing how everything looked.77 When we asked what was going on, we learned that an international delegation of a human rights organisation was visiting that day and that we would not be able to see any of the men detained because they wanted them to remain placid, insinuating that their contact with us would upset them. So, they asked us to leave. The next day we found out that the detention area, to the shock of those locked inside, was thoroughly cleaned too, the toilets had been fixed and the showers unclogged, men were offered shampoo and soap and a toilet roll each and they were allowed to go to the canteen to buy their food and drinks for the first time in a very long time. The police officers, who maintained a better relationship with the detainees, were purposefully on shift that day; thus, keeping those detained calmer and presenting a façade of order. Furthermore, a large number of detainees were released the night before in an effort to decongest the cells, which at the time would hold between 6 and 8 people in single or double occupancy dormitories. 77 See Fili (2013) for what the airport detention facility normally looked like. 123