The general belief that NGOs ‘do good’, unencumbered and untainted by the politics of authorities or indeed their human nature raises high expectations about them (Fisher, 1997). But, considering the police and NGOs as entirely distinct fails to capture the complexities of those working in this context. Indeed, the everyday contact and continuing contamination between their work and that of the police led sometimes to the justification of poor conditions in the centres. On my first day at the airport detention centre as an NGO employee I met with a newly arrived migrant. He was puzzled about why he had been arrested and detained and he was very frustrated with the conditions inside the cells. He was hurling abuse and promised he would take Greece to the European Court for Human Rights. When he calmed down, his story unraveled. He originally came from Afghanistan but had acquired refugee status in the UK. He came to Greece allegedly to help his 5-year-old nephew, who was in Greece unaccompanied, and he planned to take him back to the UK with false papers.113 He said that he had been taken to court for trying to rescue his nephew, but had been acquitted, at which point, my colleague started speaking. ‘I understand that you feel angry about the conditions here but I’m ashamed of my country that acquitted a person like you, who has been trying to smuggle kids out of the country. Do you know that what you were trying to do was illegal? Of course, you knew. But I don’t understand people like you. You get paid to smuggle kids and then you complain about the conditions of your detention…’. (Diary, 2012) When he left, she rolled her eyes and told me that she could not stand these people, i.e., smugglers. On another occasion at the Petrou Ralli facility when I was doing participant observation in 2012, an alleged smuggler had been badly beaten by the police. According to his testimony, they had beaten him for hours and the bruises all over his body attested to that. After the NGO doctor examined him, there was a debate about what had happened, with some NGO workers saying that they felt sorry for him and others claiming that he deserved this treatment. Ideas of race and gender offered crucial resources for the regulation of who receives ‘treatment’ from the NGO workers, be it social and psychological help or medical care. In these cases, NGO professionals justified their actions and the harsh institutions in which 113 A very common story among those arrested at the airport. 169