era and despite fervent opposition not only by other parties but also by local residents. The aim was to close down the centre within 100 days, and other centres as soon as possible. The Greek government’s plan was further accompanied by the announcement of a range of measures that presented an important step towards reducing the use of immigration detention in Greece (Ministry of Citizen Protection 2015). The announcement included the revocation of the Ministerial Decision allowing detention beyond 18 months, and the immediate release of persons, who had been detained for more than this time. Furthermore, action would be taken in order to put in place open reception centres instead of detention facilities. The announcement also noted that alternatives to detention would be implemented for the first time, the maximum period of detention would be limited to six months, and persons belonging to vulnerable groups, including asylum seekers would be immediately released. In the following months, the detained population shrunk from around 7,000 to a few hundred (AITIMA, 2016). Yet, only one year later, in March 2016, pre-removal detention centres were back again reaching their full capacity, and Greece was fast becoming a containing space of the thousands of refugees trapped in its islands and mainland (AITIMA, 2016). How can this turnaround be explained? Immigration detention during a ‘refugee crisis’70 In June 2015, at the same time as the government was negotiating a new bail out deal with Europe, there was a general understanding that the boats would not stop coming. Indeed, over the summer of 2015, the numbers escalated most notably as a result of the Syrian war, reaching their peak in October with 210,824 new arrivals (UNHCR, 2015). However, the Greek government did not have the resources to deal with the enormous task of registering and managing the incoming population. As Rozakou (2017, p. 43) reports, ‘in late August 2015 there was a backlog of 20,000 unrecorded border crossers on Lesvos’. In an attempt to put more pressure on the EU to pour in more funds, members of the government threatened to unleash a wave ‘of millions of economic migrants’ on Europe unless the EU helped Greece financially (Waterfield, 2015). 70 This section draws on my analysis in Fili (2018a). 115