KEY FINDINGS • Greece is again facing an escalation in the numbers of people arriving to its shores, yet its capacity to respond to these pressures appears dramatically inadequate, with aid workers pointing to “levels of human suffering” at camps on the Greek islands— where thousands have been stranded for years—as “indescribable.”1 • Domestic and international observers have denounced for many years, starting long before the refugee “crisis” erupted in 2015, the treatment of immigration detainees and the miserable conditions in detention facilities as amounting to inhuman and degrading treatment. • Unaccompanied children are frequently detained for lengthy periods in woefully inadequate conditions because of a persistent lack of space in reception centres and shelters. • On some Greek islands, authorities continue to automatically detain people for their entire asylum procedures when they come from countries that have a low international protection recognition rate. • Police and border guard stations are frequently used for prolonged immigration detention even though they lack appropriate facilities to do so. • Authorities rarely employ non-custodial “alternatives to detention.” H. Smith, “Aid Workers Warn of Catastrophe in Greek Refugee Camps,” 17 September 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/17/aid-workers-warn-of-catastrophe-in-greek-refugee-camps 1 Immigration Detention in Greece: Stranded in Aegean Limbo © Global Detention Project 2019 6