attention to the body-punishment relationship and further explores the discursive and literal power of medical care in detention facilities to facilitate at the same time release and expulsion, as well as demarcate belonging. Ultimately, I have shown how medical care takes part in both medical relief and body control, thus working both as a limit and an aide to state violence. Conclusion When the director of NGO Arogos founded the organisation back in the beginning of 2000s, she had already been on humanitarian missions in war ridden countries around the world. She was a passionate woman who wanted to fight for people’s right to live in dignity. Less than ten years later, she was sitting at the office of the police director at Petrou Ralli, negotiating who was going to be released that day. While this may seem as her sacrificing her ideals, it is actually in keeping with the much-discussed aspect of humanitarian action; white saviourism and the need to soothe the troubled souls of white folk through the logics of care (Pallister-Wilkins, 2021). Back in 2012, one of the social workers employed by the NGO told me that at night she often drove by Fylis street, an infamous street in the centre of Athens, where a large number of sex work houses exist, to see where the women she met in detention came from and where they would likely end up after their release. Despite all the limits of the provision of services inside detention analysed above, NGO staff did create personal bonds with detainees, often spending after hours to find a release path for some of those they met inside detention. ‘We were there to care. To listen to them. Understand what they were going through so I could cope with it and help them cope with it then.’ (Interview, Athens, 2018), explained Anna, a former psychologist. In this rhetoric of care, female professionals drew on gendered ideas to make sense of their roles; referring to maternal care and motherly bonds with male detainees (Esposito, et al., 2020b. In the process, detainees were infantilised. ‘Some enjoyed the care. When we were giving them their pills, it was like feeding them.’ (Interview, Athens, 2018) Others emphasised the more practical aspects of their role, referring to themselves as an outlet for detainees, who were using the ‘trip’ from the cells to their offices as their daily walk. Furthermore, information 172