Against this context, the pressure of an external threat, lay dormant beneath the veneer of Greek homogeneity and the image of Greek time and space as a continuum, swiftly transforming migration into a security issue against which the country needed to be protected (Karyotis, 2012). The concept of fortification, i.e., a war tactic, which describes the policy design that followed, is also shown by the terminology used. For example, operation ‘Shield’, whose main purpose was to control and deter irregular arrivals by strengthening the physical presence of patrol officers at the Greek-Turkish land border (Angeli et al., 2014). As Georgios Karyotis (2012, p. 397) explains in his work on the securitisation of migration in Greece, ‘the institutional configuration during the 1990s demonstrated a high degree of militarization, through which the police and even the army emerged as key actors in Greek migration policy’ (Karyotis, 2012, p. 397; see also Huysmans, 2006).37 In stark opposition to these xenophobic logics, this chapter aims to ‘puncture the narcissistic justifications’ (Tyler, 2013, p. 76) of the Greek state and attest to ways in which the relentless dehumanization and invisibilisation of others are central to feeding the Greek ‘deep state’ (O’Niel, 2017); the main apparatuses of which, the military and the police, were central in outlining the contours of the Greek detention regime in the first place. The following focuses on two main eras of detention policies; first, the period from 1990 to 2000, which rarely is accounted for, and second, the period from 2001 to 2009, during which the detention estate was firmly established. Through providing details about the initial disjointed phase of governing migration in Greece from 1990 to 2010, I explore the underlying foundations upon which the detention estate of today was built at the same time as referring to distinct eras marked by legislation changes, the shifting of entry points, and other socio-legal developments. The few accounts of immigration detention in the country rarely adopt a historical perspective and seem to take as a starting point the period after 2010, when detention undeniably became a key measure for policing migration (Angeli et al., 2014); coinciding with heavier involvement by outside actors, such as human rights organisations and NGOs offering services to detained people and thus more monitoring of the reality behind bars. It should be noted that Greece is still one of the few remaining Western nations to have mandatory military service for men. 37 67