Graduate Journal of Social Science, Volume 15, Issue 1 process which pushes the borders of Europe outwards and inwards (De Genova & Tazzioli, 2016; Frelick, Kysel, & Podkul, 2016; Hess & Kasparek, 2017; Ruhrmann & FitzGerald, 2016). The internalisation of borders within European countries like Greece vividly echoes Blair’s “Safe Havens” vision. It includes the “safe country” concept (European Commission, 2015; Ruhrmann & FitzGerald, 2016, p. 7), according to which countries like Turkey and Afghanistan are recognised as “safe” (European Council, 2016; European Union, 2016). The “safe country” concept has a direct effect on the asylum procedures which take place within the safe countries. It also includes bilateral and readmission agreements. With an exchange of development, capacity building and financial aid, countries which were only “transit” are now becoming “buffer zones”, keeping border crossers stranded there. “Buffer states” thus become the watchdogs or, in Liz Fekete’s words, the “immigration police” (Fekete, 2001) of the external frontiers of fortress Europe. After all, as the American poet Robert Frost phrases it, “Good fences make good neighbors” (Frost, 1914). Additionally, it includes the deployment of maritime patrol operations within the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea (Frontex, NATO, EU Naval Force Med) (Garelli & Tazzioli, 2016), as well as the establishment of a European Border and Coast Guard which “would consist of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, an enhanced FRONTEX, and the national border authorities, which are to share responsibility for European integrated border management” (Ruhrmann & FitzGerald, 2016, p. 25). From the abovementioned policies, those which crucially affected Greece and particularly Lesvos were the EU-Turkey Statement, the ‘geographical restriction’ rule, and the Hotspot approach. According to Wakil, one of my interviewees and a lawyer supporting border crossers on Lesvos, the Greek Government is determined to implement the EU-Turkey Statement and the ‘geographical restriction’ rule “no matter what”. This is evident in the fact that activists and NGOs, as well as Law Bar Associations, have repeatedly been noting that the ‘geographical restriction’ is arbitrary, against the Greek Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights, an outcome of arbitrary interpretation and thus a political decision (Chios Law Bar Association, 2016). As Wakil stated during her interview, Turkey does not accept refugees back if it is proved that returnees are sent from another part of Greece and not from the islands. The EU-Turkey 10 (Unformatted version, page numbers not final)