we visited the Attica General Police Directorate on Alexandras Avenue in Athens to monitor the conditions of detention for undocumented migrants who, at that time, were held there in a special detention center for foreigners. Human Rights Watch found not only “severe overcrowding,” but also that detainees were “deprived of exercise time, fresh air, adequate amounts of food, proper access to counsel, and proper access to physicians.”210 Human Rights Watch is releasing a separate report, researched simultaneously with this one and entitled Left to Survive: Protection Breakdown for Unaccompanied Children in Greece,211 which further documents police violence against migrant children and illtreatment of children in detention, including the failure to properly identify children and the detention of children together with adults. While the failures of Greece in providing adequate sanitary conditions, health care, space, recreation, food, access to interpreters and legal counsel are woeful in many places, Human Rights Watch also recognizes and welcomes improvements, such as the closing of the old Samos facility, the renovations at Peplos and some accounts of improvements at Mitilini (which Human Rights Watch was not able to confirm). The closing of old migration detention facilities and the building of new ones indicates that Greece is not entirely unresponsive to criticisms of its treatment of migrants and asylum seekers in immigration detention, and that conditions do not appear to be inhuman and degrading in some locations, such as what Human Rights Watch was able to observe at the new Samos facility. Human Rights Watch also notes that Greece has both a three-month statutory limit on the duration of administrative detention for migrants pending expulsion212 and, according to the refugee law passed after the Human Rights Watch visit, a two-month limit on the detention of asylum seekers who apply for asylum before the initiation of deportation procedures.213 On the positive side, these limits—in contrast to Turkey— 210 “Urgent Concerns: Conditions Of Detention For Foreigners In Greece,” Human Rights Watch Memorandum, December 2000 http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/eca/greece-detention-bck.htm. 211 Human Rights Watch, Left to Survive: Protection Breakdown for Unaccompanied Children in Greece, December 2008. 212 Law 3386/2005 Article 76 213 Presidential Decree 90/2008, Article 13.2. If the asylum seeker applies for asylum after deportation proceedings have started, the three-month limit on detention still applies (see Art. 13.1, Presidential Decree90/2008). Stuck in a Revolving Door 84