This means that the period before 2010 remains somewhat of a mystery, partly because of lower numbers in detention and partly due to the intentional policy of keeping detention spaces ‘unofficial’ and those detained inside them shielded from outside contacts to divert accountability in the face of institutional culpability, complicity and crisis. Therefore, this chapter performs the political task of documenting the long-hidden history of immigration detention in Greece to form the construction of a ‘hypervigilant anti-racist remembering’ (Nayak, 2017, p. 8). The analysis is based on official documents available on public access. In the absence of research into those early years, I found that monitoring reports by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, whose mandate includes visits to any places within a state’s jurisdiction where persons are deprived of their liberty by a public authority with a view to examine the treatment of such persons and make recommendations, provided a rare window into the hidden workings of Greece’s first detention facilities. The analysis further turns to other reports by human rights organisations, policy analysis and ethnographic material to draw out hidden or forgotten accounts of immigration detention and provide a critical examination of the actions of Greek governments and the authorities, which managed those early detention spaces. Responding to the ‘shock’ of immigration (1990-2000) Greece did not transform into a destination country for migrants overnight. As Nikolinakos (1973) observed, from the 1970s’, large-scale emigration and the capitalist restructuring of the country led to the ‘import of Africans’, who were employed in different sectors, soon followed by returning emigrants of previous periods. By 1986, there were also more than 19,000 Asian foreign workers in Greece (Fakiolas and King, 1996). Their small numbers and their low visibility in large city centres, as they were either employed in agriculture or as domestic helpers and nurses, can explain the absence of a public outcry similar to the ones that followed. The right-wing government, formed after the 1990 election, was particularly concerned with issues of political (in)stability and ethnic conflict in the Balkans fearing large-scale economic migration. More importantly, the ‘Macedonian question’, as has the dispute 68