pacity, yet they raised more questions than they answered. If the centre
has been in operation since 2015, why is there such an absence of official
sources referring to it? Equally surprising was the absence of administrative acts related to the Poros centre in diavgeia.gov.gr, in contrast to
all other facilities in the area where migrants are detained, such as the
Fylakio Reception and Identification Centre and the pre-removal centres
and police stations. It was conceivable, of course, that the centre fell into
disuse. Since the deployment of Frontex and the border control measures
taken under the Integrated Plan, entries through the Greek-Turkish land
border decreased significantly – from 54,974 in 2011 to 3,784 in 2016 (Hellenic Police, 2020), and screening procedures were transferred to Fylakio,
fully operational since 2013 (Reception and Identification Service, 2020).
Trying to find answers to our questions, we contacted the Hellenic Police.
An email we sent in January 2020 was never answered. In early February, following a series of phone calls, we obtained some answers to our
questions. The police officer who answered the phone call did not seem to
have heard of the centre and wanted to ask other departments for more
information, as well as the First Reception and Identification Service, now
responsible for screening procedures. The next day, he said it is occasionally used as a detention facility, when there is a high number of apprehended people that cannot be detained in police cells. According to the
police officer, they are detained there for one or two days, until they can
be transferred to the Reception and Identification Centre of Fylakio for
reception procedures, or detention in the pre-removal detention centre
adjacent to it. At the same time, he stated that he was told that Poros has
been closed for a long time.
This contradictory information could be down to the distance between
the central police directorate in Athens and the area of Evros – it is not
unlikely that local arrangements are not known in the central offices. Yet,
it was also at odds both with the description of the use of the centre that
our informant himself gave us – using the present tense in Greek –, with
what the local media articles suggest, and with what we saw on site. Stills
from the video taken during fieldwork in December 2020 suggest that the
Poros centre is not disused, although no activity could be observed on the
day. The cars and vans parked outside did not seem abandoned or rusting.
The main building and the containers appeared to be in a good condition.
A bright red cloth, maybe a canvas bag, was hanging outside one of them.
The rubbish bins were full, but the black bags and other objects in them
did not seem as they have been left in the open for a long time (image 4).
The police officer also asked, however, how we had heard of Poros – a
question that alerted us to both the obscure nature of the facility and the
sensitivity of our query.
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