of proper information on rights and obligations (e.g. right to asylum), referrals of asylum seekers to the competent Regional Asylum Office (RAO), and the referral of vulnerable persons to proper accommodation and support.13 All, in turn, form the basis for the first-line reception of third-country nationals and stateless persons and are to be performed under the competence of the Reception and Identification Service (RIS), 14 which is also responsible for the management of the RICs. Despite the importance of the aforementioned procedure, however, throughout the research it became apparent that asylum seekers, who undergo highly perilous journeys in hopes of reaching a safe (European) haven, have been systematically excluded from accessing reception. This exclusion has at times taken the form of administrative delays, on account of which asylum seekers have been unjustifiably stripped of their liberty, while at others it has manifested through much more blatant illegalities, leading to their arbitrary deportation; a practice, furthermore, from which even recognized refugees and/or registered asylum seekers have not been spared.15 Push-backs/Refoulement On the 20th of December 2017 we visited the Greek-Turkish land borders of Evros, with the aim of assessing reception conditions at the local RIC (RIC at Fylakio, Evros). On the very same day, a man (national of Pakistan) was reported dead after allegedly having been forcefully returned to Turkey. As per the newspaper article, the man, alongside an unspecified number of other thirdcountry nationals (citizens of Pakistan and Afghanistan) was forced to cross the freezing (Evros) river in the context of an arbitrary deportation enacted by the Greek security forces. Following their (re)entry into to Turkey, the group was apprehended by the Turkish authorities and the man was transferred at a nearby hospital, as he had been suffering from symptoms of hypothermia. He passed away soon afterwards.16 Incidents such as these raise serious legal concerns as to not only the conduct of law enforcement authorities, but also their ultimate consequences with respect to the protection of the very lives of vulnerable individuals and groups –lives, that is, which law enforcement authorities are ultimately responsible to protect. Crucially, however, this was not an isolated incident. On the contrary, push-backs and/or other types of arbitrary deportations, potentially amounting to refoulement and inter alia enacted against families with children that had requested asylum upon arrival in Greece, have on multiple occasions come to light in the region of Evros.17 They have also consistently come to the attention of both GCR and other organizations, including the Hellenic League for Human Rights (HLHR) and Amnesty International,18 and consequently raised to the authorities. To this day, however, the latter have failed to attribute the matter its proper importance, with the competent Ministry of Citizen Protection more recently (June 2017 and again in January 2018) avoiding to reply with anything more than generic answers to the allegations.19 8